Two people suffered minor injuries when a UPS cargo plane and a Copa Airlines passenger jet collided at a taxiway intersection at Miami International Airport on Saturday night. Air traffic controllers had instructed the UPS crew to let the arriving Copa jet pass, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue treated both people at the airport. Neither needed hospital transport, airport spokesman Greg Chin told the New York Post. Chin said the planes made contact around 9:15 p.m. on November 14. Airport staff routed other aircraft around the intersection, allowing flights to continue.
FAA says controllers told UPS crew to yield
Copa Flight 427, a Boeing 737, was heading to its gate after landing from Panama City. UPS Flight 358, a Boeing 767 cargo jet, was taxiing for departure to Bogotá, Colombia. In its preliminary account of the collision, the FAA said the Copa jet’s wingtip struck the nose of the UPS aircraft.
Air traffic control audio captured the exchange moments after the impact. The Copa pilot radioed that another aircraft had hit the jet. When a controller asked the UPS crew whether the planes had made contact, a crew member replied, “Yeah, we went too far and he clipped us with his wing,” according to the Post. The FAA is investigating.
Miami was already experiencing delays and cancellations after a communications outage prompted the FAA to halt departures nationwide for more than four hours on Friday. The agency lifted that order Friday evening. Its preliminary statement on Saturday’s collision identifies the taxiway movements and the instruction to yield. It draws no connection to the earlier outage.
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