A Delta Air Lines jet clipped an Air Canada plane on a Los Angeles runway Tuesday morning, forcing delays while a witness said the taxiing aircraft struck a plane that was sitting still.
Delta Flight 7 was taxiing for departure at Los Angeles International Airport when its left wingtip struck the horizontal stabilizer of Air Canada Flight 875, the New York Post reported.
The collision happened Tuesday morning on the runway at LAX. No injuries were reported in the available account, and damage details were not released.
Federal officials and a passenger who watched from another plane offered different descriptions of what the Air Canada jet was doing at the moment of impact.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Air Canada flight was not free-moving on its own power when the contact occurred.
The agency stated:
"The Air Canada flight was being towed when it stopped short of its gate,"
That places the Canadian jet short of the gate, under tow, at the time Delta’s wingtip made contact.
Jayson Lowe, CEO of Ascendant Financial Inc., was on a different flight that had just landed. He said he watched the strike while his plane taxied to the gate and posted what he saw.
Lowe wrote:
"I was looking out the window as we were taxiing to our arrival gate and a Delta A350 managed to hit a parked Air Canada plane. A parked plane. I cannot stress this enough,"
He went further on the Delta crew’s awareness of a large aircraft nearby:
"somebody in that Delta cockpit lost spatial awareness near an object roughly the size of a condominium building with wings."
The FAA described a jet under tow that stopped short. Lowe described a parked plane. Both accounts put the Air Canada aircraft stationary, or nearly so, when Delta’s left wingtip hit the horizontal stabilizer.
By 1 p.m. Tuesday, FlightAware showed 26 flights originating from LAX delayed and two cancelled. Gate-hold and taxi delays ran 15 minutes or less. Arrival traffic saw airborne delays of 15 minutes or less.
It was not clear whether those backups stemmed directly from the runway collision or from routine congestion the same day.
Airport status boards reflected the slower flow. Full aircraft registrations beyond Delta Flight 7, Air Canada Flight 875, and the witness description of a Delta A350 were not released in the initial report. No runway closure, diversion order, or formal cause finding was announced beyond the brief FAA statement.
Two large airliners should not share the same piece of metal on a major U.S. runway. When a taxiing wingtip meets another jet’s tail, passengers deserve a clear answer on who missed what, and how a plane the size of a building ended up in the strike zone.
