Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Two Delta Air Lines planes col­lid­ed on a taxi­way at At­lanta’s air­port Tues­day morn­ing, with a larg­er plane knock­ing over the tail of a small­er re­gion­al jet.

No in­juries were re­port­ed, and Delta said pas­sen­gers were re­booked on oth­er flights that de­part­ed Tues­day af­ter­noon.

At­lanta-based Delta said the wing of a Delta Air­bus A350 jet that was bound for Tokyo hit the tail of a small­er Bom­bardier CRJ-900 that was on an ad­ja­cent taxi­way. The re­gion­al jet, op­er­at­ed by Delta sub­sidiary En­deav­or Air, was prepar­ing to take off for Lafayette, Louisiana.

“You know I just no­ticed that the tail on the RJ is miss­ing,” an air traf­fic con­troller said, ac­cord­ing to au­dio archives main­tained by LiveATC.net. “So En­deav­or 5526, hold your po­si­tion, and do you re­quire any im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance?”

“No im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance,” a pi­lot an­swers back. “We’ll need a tow, though.”

Ja­son Adams, a me­te­o­rol­o­gist for WFTS-TV in Tam­pa, Flori­da, who is trav­el­ing to Louisiana to cov­er Trop­i­cal Storm Francine, re­count­ed the mo­ment of im­pact on so­cial plat­form X.

“Well, that was ter­ri­fy­ing,” Adams wrote. “Taxi­ing out for the flight from At­lanta to Louisiana and an­oth­er plane ap­pears to have clipped the back of our plane. Very jar­ring, met­al scrap­ing sounds then loud bangs. We’re fine. No fire or smoke.”

Adams post­ed pic­tures of the tail of the small­er plane knocked on its side and lay­ing on the taxi­way.

Delta said the wing of the larg­er plane was al­so dam­aged.

“We apol­o­gize to our cus­tomers for the ex­pe­ri­ence,” the air­line said in a state­ment.

Of­fi­cials at Harts­field-Jack­son At­lanta In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port said pas­sen­gers from one plane were bused back to the ter­mi­nal, while the oth­er plane re­turned to a gate un­der its own pow­er. There were 221 pas­sen­gers on the Air­bus and 56 pas­sen­gers on the re­gion­al jet.

Delta said it would co­op­er­ate with the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board and oth­er au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate. The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion says it is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Air­port of­fi­cials de­scribed dis­rup­tions to op­er­a­tions at the world’s busiest air­port as “min­i­mal”. Delta said both planes would be moved to main­te­nance hangars. —AT­LANTA (AP)