Warren Boardly Jr. saw a flash, threw up his hands, and ducked. Seconds later, the landing gear of a United Airlines Boeing 767 scraped across the top of his 18-wheeler on the New Jersey Turnpike. His father says the Baltimore bakery driver believed he was about to be decapitated.
The Sunday collision near Newark Liberty International Airport left Boardly Jr. with what his family's attorney calls an acute head injury and an emotional toll that "is just not gonna heal overnight." It left federal investigators with a question that should trouble every motorist who drives that stretch of highway: How did a commercial jet carrying more than 200 people come so close to the road that it clipped a truck?
United Flight 169, arriving from Venice, Italy, struck both a light pole and the H&S Bakery semitrailer during its final approach to Newark shortly before 2 p.m. on May 3, the Washington Times reported. New Jersey State Police confirmed the landing gear hit the truck. The driver was heading north on the turnpike, en route to a bakery depot in Newark, when a tire from the landing gear crashed into the top of his vehicle.
At a Tuesday news conference, Warren Boardly Sr. described what his son told him about the moment of impact. Fox News Digital reported the father's account in detail:
"He said he seen a flash and it made him duck and put up his hands."
That instinct may have saved his life. But the fear did not end with the flash.
"He described fear, total fear that he wouldn't walk away from it, he thought that he would be decapitated. That's what he thought."
The elder Boardly put the margin of survival in stark terms:
"Had he been going one mile per hour faster, or one mile per hour slower, it would have more than likely killed him."
He added that the incident "shook me to my core" and said Tuesday "could have been a day where we are mourning his loss."
Boardly Jr. escaped with what appeared at first to be minor visible injuries, cuts from shattered windshield and window glass on his arm and forearm, the Washington Examiner reported. He was hospitalized and later released. But his father and attorney say the damage may run deeper.
Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon told reporters Boardly Jr. may have sustained blunt-force or closed-head trauma. His emotional state, the father said, remains fragile:
"His mental and emotional status is... you know, it's coming. We have to get him looked at because that was a traumatic experience. I've never known anyone to walk away from something like that. So, you know, he feels the same way. He's struggling with that part of that."
United Airlines offered a notably narrow description of what happened. The airline's statement said: "Upon its final approach into Newark International Airport, United flight 169 came into contact with a light pole." It added that the aircraft "landed safely, taxied to the gate normally and no passengers or crew were injured."
No mention of the truck. No mention of the driver. No mention of the man inside the cab who thought he was about to lose his head.
That gap between what United acknowledged and what the evidence shows is worth watching. Surveillance footage captured the jet clipping the tractor-trailer. The family's lawyer, New Jersey State Police, and multiple witnesses corroborate the truck strike. The airline's decision to reference only the light pole, while technically accurate as far as it goes, omits the human being who nearly died on the highway below.
A separate United statement, reported by the Washington Examiner, said: "Our maintenance team is evaluating damage to the aircraft and we will investigate how this occurred." The aircraft sustained moderate damage, that outlet noted. The airline carried 221 passengers and 10 crew members, though AP News reported the total aboard at 231 people.
Either way, hundreds of lives hung on the same razor-thin margin as the truck driver's.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration both opened investigations. The NTSB directed United to secure and provide the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. A preliminary report outlining the facts and circumstances is expected within 30 days.
The NTSB reclassified the incident from an "incident" to an "accident" because of the extent of the plane's damage, AP News reported. That distinction matters, it triggers a more rigorous investigative process and signals the severity regulators now assign to what happened.
Investigators are examining weather, runway conditions, and the crew's approach. Newark's Runway 29 is known for its short length and challenging approach path. Strong winds were a factor on Sunday. Safety expert Steve Arroyo, quoted by Newsmax, framed how close the outcome came to catastrophe:
"A major catastrophe was avoided by feet."
Arroyo added: "Had it been another 5 feet lower, 8 feet, I mean, no more than 10 feet, that plane would have been all over the New Jersey Turnpike."
Patrick Oyulu, a witness, told AP News that "the plane seemed to come in almost directly over the highway."
This is not the first time a vehicle and aircraft have come dangerously close in recent months. An American Airlines pilot braked hard to dodge a truck on a Charlotte taxiway in a separate incident that raised fresh questions about ground-safety protocols at major airports.
Gordon, the Boardly family's attorney, stopped short of announcing a lawsuit but made clear the family sees negligence in the picture. He told reporters:
"We expect that there's some negligence there because planes just don't drop out of the sky and they just don't ordinarily and routinely hit 18-wheelers traveling along the New Jersey Turnpike."
He added that the family is in a fact-finding phase and would not rush to the courthouse:
"We're not just going to file a lawsuit without having all the facts or having enough facts that we believe that we can reasonably prove our case. So, in terms of litigation, we're nowhere near there. We're in the fact finding process right now just to get enough information to if we needed to file a lawsuit."
That measured approach is notable. The family is not grandstanding. They want answers before they make demands, a posture that should put pressure on United and federal regulators to deliver those answers quickly and transparently.
Chuck Paterakis of H&S Bakery, Boardly Jr.'s employer, offered his own assessment to the New York Post:
"To me, that everybody on that plane, everybody and the driver, God was looking after them, there's no doubt. If we did that scenario again, I don't know if anybody could've survived that."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy weighed in bluntly, as reported by the Washington Examiner: "This should never happen in America."
The NTSB's 30-day preliminary report will begin to fill in the gaps. But the open questions are serious. Why was Flight 169 so low on approach that its landing gear could reach a truck on the turnpike? Did the crew deviate from the glide path? Were wind conditions beyond acceptable limits for Runway 29? Did air traffic control play any role?
The initial reporting on this incident focused on the plane's safe landing and the lack of injuries aboard. That framing was incomplete. A man nearly died in his truck cab. He is still recovering at home, dealing with pain and emotional distress his family says will not heal quickly.
Recent aviation safety failures have drawn increasing scrutiny. An NTSB report on a deadly LaGuardia Airport crash revealed missing transponders and controller failures, underscoring systemic weaknesses in how aircraft and ground operations interact near America's busiest airports.
Newark's proximity to the New Jersey Turnpike has always made its approach paths unusually tight. Millions of drivers pass beneath those flight paths every year. Most never think about the margin between a routine landing and a disaster. On May 3, that margin shrank to feet, and one working man paid the price.
United Airlines can talk about light poles. The NTSB can take its 30 days. But Warren Boardly Jr. is at home right now, in pain, struggling with what happened to him on a highway he drives for a living. He deserves a full accounting, and so does every driver who shares that road.
When a commercial jet comes close enough to a public highway to rip into an 18-wheeler, "the aircraft landed safely" is not the whole story. It is barely the beginning.
