A350 and CRJ collide on ground at ATL

[FA@AC]

https://onemileatatime.com/news/delta-airbus-a350-slices-tail-off-regional-jet-atlanta/

[deicer]

A little speed tape and it'll be good to go!

[Malcolm]

video

Two Delta planes collide on an Atlanta taxiway, knocking the tail off one (msn.com)

[dagger]

Had me thinking of some of the pedestrian-vehicle accidents we have where the driver of a pickup or large SUV is so high off the ground he or she literally doesn't see a pedestrian walking in front of the vehicle. I wonder if the cockpit crew of the 350 could even see the smaller plane from up close, or at least had trouble estimating distance and speed at such close quarters as it came upon the CRJ

Edited September 10 by dagger

[J.O.]

17 hours ago, dagger said:

Had me thinking of some of the pedestrian-vehicle accidents we have where the driver of a pickup or large SUV is so high off the ground he or she literally doesn't see a pedestrian walking in front of the vehicle. I wonder if the cockpit crew of the 350 could even see the smaller plane from up close, or at least had trouble estimating distance and speed at such close quarters as it came upon the CRJ

The A350 is the largest aircraft in the Delta fleet. I've flown the A330 and it's almost impossible to properly judge wingtip clearance from the flight deck, and the A350 would only be even more difficult. In the case of this incident, the captain would be relying on the first officer to be monitoring that side of the aircraft. On Juan Brown's YouTube channel, he did an analysis of the scene based on the pictures and he believes that if the CRJ had been parked at the hold line, there would have been adequate clearance. Since the CRJ was parked about 50 feet short of that line, the A350's wingtip was perfectly aligned with the tail of the CRJ.

[st27]

I would think that if the clearance is suspect, and I’m assuming you can see the wing tip from the cockpit, why wouldn’t the 350 stop, tell ground to have the CRJ move up so that “wing tip clearance could be assured”? (Can’t remember where I’ve heard that before!)

[boestar]

Shallow angle and 150 feet (or whatever ) of wing would make it very difficult to judge especially from the cockpit.

[Tango Foxtrot]

[J.O.]

This video shows the actual collision sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzZgWCrFoXI

The CRJ appears to be stationary. If this is true, it means they did indeed stop well short of the hold line. I'm not saying they are at fault because it is the responsibility of the crew of each moving aircraft to ensure they are avoiding all obstacles, but a taxi clearance for the A350 crew may have created a false sense of security, especially if it is routine to taxi past regional aircraft holding short on that taxiway.

[st27]

On one video, the 350 crew states they had a problem and needed to sort it out….ground gave them clearance to proceed past the taxiway for departure runway…maybe a case of heads down with the problem rather than looking outside while taxiing.

 

[Tango Foxtrot]

 

 I seem to remember an incident in YVR that was very similar.  

 A Dash 8 300 had it's tail removed by an A330 in almost exactly the same circumstances.