TRAVELERS have been left stranded after two Delta planes crashed into each other and caused airport chaos.
Shocking video shows the aftermath of the two airplanes crashing into each other on the taxiway at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
The two planes were damaged after colliding at Laguardia Airport on Wednesday[/caption]
First responders inspecting the damage after the collision[/caption]
The collision ripped the wing off one of the jets in the crash on Wednesday night.
In the video of the aftermath, two damaged aircraft are seen surrounded by crew members on the taxiway.
On one plane, the cockpit windshield is cracked and the nose is ripped up. On the other, the right wing was torn off.
One person, a flight attendant, was hurt in the collision and sent to the hospital with a minor leg injury.
Endeavor Air Flight 5047, arriving from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Endeavor Flight 5155, scheduled to leave for Roanoke, Virginia, hit each other on the taxiway just before 10 pm.
“It was a pretty violent collision,” reported CBS News producer Joy Annunziato, who was on Flight 5047.
“They hit the brakes like as hard as [Mike] Tyson’s right hook. It was like they slammed the brakes, everybody kind of lurched forward, and then there was impact.”
His cellphone footage showed a pilot saying on the plane’s intercom, “It seems as though there’s an aircraft that collided with us.”
“At the time, we didn’t really know like kind of what we hit,” Annunziato said, adding that the jet’s wing appeared to be completely off the plane.
Endeavor is a subsidiary of Delta.
Flight 5047 was taxing to its gate when Flight 5155’s right wing clipped the plane’s nose and cockpit in the “low-speed collision,” Delta Air Lines said in a statement.
The pilots reported damage to their windshield, according to air traffic controller audio.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the incident caused “no impact to airport operations.”
While LaGuardia still functioned as normal, passengers on the impacted planes were escorted off the aircraft and onto shuttle buses.
Official statements about the collision
Full statement from Delta Airlines:
Delta teams at our New York-LaGuardia hub are working to ensure our customers are taken care of after two Delta Connection aircraft operated by Endeavor Air were involved in a low-speed collision during taxi. Delta will work with all relevant authorities to review what occurred as safety of our customers and people comes before all else. We apologize to our customers for the experience.
Full statement from Port Authority of New York and New Jersey:
At 9:58 p.m. there was a collision between two Canadianair CRJ-900 regional jets operated by Endeavor Air (a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines) on the taxiway at LaGuardia Airport. One was an outbound flight, the other inbound. A single person onboard one of the aircraft
suffered non-life threatening injuries and was transported to an area hospital as a precautionary measure. Passengers were deplaned on the taxiway and transferred via buses back to Terminal C. There was no impact to airport operations. Passengers on the departing planes will be rebooked to another flight. Please contact Delta Air Lines for additional information.
The departing flight to Virginia had 28 customers onboard, while the arriving plane had 57 customers.
The airline gave passengers hotel rooms for the night and booked them new flights for Thursday.
“Delta teams at our New York-LaGuardia hub are working to ensure our customers are taken care of after two Delta Connection aircraft operated by Endeavor Air were involved in a low-speed collision during taxi,” the airline told The U.S. Sun in a statement.
The statement added, “Delta will work with all relevant authorities to review what occurred as safety of our customers and people comes before all else. We apologize to our customers for the experience.”
Port Authority said in a statement, “Passengers were deplaned on the taxiway and transferred via buses back to Terminal C…Passengers on the departing planes will be rebooked to another flight.”
It’s unclear what caused the collision.
The crash occurred less than 24 hours after the federal government shutdown.
Before the shutdown, airlines warned that flights could face problems because Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers would be forced to work without pay.
