Southwest And American Planes Collide On Taxiway In Detroit This Morning

(Paul Thompson)

Not the actual wing affected. Probably. (Paul Thompson)

Passengers on early flights this morning in Detroit got a scary jolt when their planes collided while passing each other on the taxiway. Early this morning at the Detroit Metropolitan airport in the suburb of Romulus, the wing of an American Airlines aircraft clipped the tail of a Southwest aircraft while both were on their way to be de-iced.

Naturally, passengers had their phones out to capture the aftermath of the collision, since Snapchatting a scary experience makes it better. Here’s one tweet sent from the plane:

Fortunately, no people were injured, just planes. There was no fuel leakage, either, which is a risk of collisions on the ground. The incident delayed both flights: CBS reports that passengers were all still on both aircraft two hours later. The airport needed to find an empty gate so passengers wouldn’t have to climb out on an airfield. The tweeter above never did get a chance to demonstrate their emergency exit skills, it seems.

One passenger told CBS that there wasn’t really a script for what to do: tired of sitting still on a stuffy plane, he asked a flight attendant what was going to happen. “Well, this has never happened, so we don’t know what to do,” the flight attendant answered. At least he was honest.

Both airlines are now putting the passengers on other flights as they can, and Southwest said, predictably, that the plane is now “out of service for maintenance.” National Transportation Safety Board investigators are on their way to the airport to check out the incident.

“We’re too close!” Plane clips another at Detroit airport [CBS News]

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