Video: Asiana A330 Knocks the Tail Off of a Turkish Airlines A321
As aircraft are getting bigger and airports are getting busier, it seems that there are either more accidents happening on the ground or we are just hearing about more of them. Either way, there was yet another aircraft accident today that thankfully left no one injured.
Sunday morning at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport (IST), a taxiing Asiana Airlines Airbus A330-300 (registration HL7792) struck a stationary Turkish Airlines Airbus A321-200 (registration TC-JMM), wrecking the Turkish aircraft's vertical stabilizer.
While some recent ground aircraft incidents have been a "near miss" leaving minor damage, that was not the case here. The Asiana A330's wing made contact all the way across the vertical stabilizer — not just the rear part of the tail — as video of the incident shows:
As the video shows, the impact caused fluid to spray out of the broken-off tail. It's unclear if this is hydraulic fluid or something else. Istanbul airport fire crews responded to the incident. Photos of the incident show hoses were deployed, seemingly for precautionary reasons in case the A321's auxiliary power unit (APU) were to catch fire due to the damage.
Asiana flight 552 was taxiing for departure back to Seoul, South Korea (ICN). The flight was cancelled after the accident due to the substantial damage to the wing.
According to FlightRadar24, the Turkish aircraft had just arrived from Ercan (ECN) operating Turkish flight 969. As the video shows, the aircraft was stopped far outside of the parking position. It seems clear that the Asiana pilots didn't realize that the Turkish aircraft had stopped short of the gate, causing the accident.
