Another Day, Another Airline Fender-Bender

May 25, 2018

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3 min read

Another Day, Another Airline Fender-Bender

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Thursday, an Aer Lingus plane scraped against a pole in San Francisco. Two weeks ago, an Asiana A330 tore the tail off a Turkish Airlines A321 in Istanbul. Earlier this month, a truck slammed into a Southwest plane in Baltimore. Last month, we learned how two Qantas jets nearly collided on a runway in Perth. In March, two aircraft hit one another in Tel Aviv.

And on Friday, the slew of plane collisions continued. A Ryanair jet was "stationary at the designated holding point on the taxiway" preparing for departure from London's Stansted Airport (STN) when a Primera Air aircraft clipped the tail of the Ryanair aircraft. Airport fire crews scrambled to the site of the incident, but no injuries or fire were reported from the incident.

Note: both aircraft were on the taxiway; neither was on the runway when the collision occurred.

The Primera Air flight was #2871 from London Stansted to Malaga (AGP) and the Ryanair aircraft was operating flight 205 from London Stansted to Dublin (DUB). Both aircraft involved in the incident are Boeing 737-800s. Stansted Airport noted in a statement that "airfield operations were briefly suspended, but all flights have now resumed."

One notable aspect of this story is that many of the Ryanair passengers were traveling back to Ireland to cast a vote in Friday's abortion referendum. Would-be voters needed to arrive back in Ireland before voting closes at 10pm local time. One passenger even took to social media to claim that Ryanair was "trying to obstruct this referendum." But, Ryanair came through with a replacement 737-800 that operated flight 205, landing in Dublin at 1:36pm.

Meanwhile, Primera Air passengers are having to wait out an 18-hour delay for a replacement aircraft to make its way to Stansted. This aircraft swap is also going to cause an 8-hour delay of a Primera Air flight from Stansted to Alicante (ALC).