Delta passenger plane strikes regional jet at Atlanta airport

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are both investigating an incident during which the wing of a Delta Air Lines plane struck a regional jet while taxiing for departure at the Atlanta airport, damaging both planes.

The incident resulted in severe damage to the tail of the much smaller regional jet.

The FAA and the NTSB said the collision occurred at the intersection of two taxiways at about 10.10am local time on Tuesday.

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The airline said the wing of a Delta Airbus A350 that was departing for Tokyo struck the tail of an Endeavor Air CRJ-900 that was scheduled to depart for Lafayette, Louisiana.

It caused severe damage to the tail of the regional jet and also damaged the wing of the Airbus jet. Endeavor is a wholly owned Delta subsidiary. Delta said there were no reported injuries among the 221 passengers on the A350 and 56 passengers on the CRJ-900.

A number of near-miss and runway incursion incidents last year raised concerns about US aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air traffic control, prompting the NTSB to call for more technology to prevent collisions.

The FAA administrator, Mike Whitaker, said earlier at an industry conference on Tuesday that the agency has deployed technologies at some airports that provide an alert if an aircraft is lined up on the wrong runway or taxiway.

“We’ve started to deploy pretty simple off-the-shelf solutions for controllers to get better situational awareness,” Whitaker said, adding that close calls were down by more than half in the first half of the year. “So there’s progress, but we need to get better. There’s no excuse for that happening.”

Reuters contributed reporting