Two Delta planes collide — ripping off wing — while taxiing at LaGuardia Airport as passenger describes moment flights ‘absolutely smashed’
Two packed Delta jets “absolutely smashed” into each other on the runway at LaGuardia Airport Wednesday night, according to authorities and terrified passengers — destroying a plane’s nose and ripping off a large part of a wing.
The saga unfolded when the wing of an aircraft carrying 32 people that was departing for Roanoke, Virginia, suddenly collided with the fuselage of an aircraft arriving from Charlotte, North Carolina, with 61 people aboard just before 10 p.m., Delta said in a statement.
“Their right wing clipped our nose and the cockpit. We have damage to our windscreen and… some of our screens in here,” one pilot could be heard saying in air traffic control audio.
Photos from the scene showed one of the plane’s windshields completely shattered and its nose banged up in the wake of the collision.
A huge part of a jet’s wing was also torn off.
“We got absolutely smashed by another Delta flight. I don’t know if we hit them or they hit us, but it was super jarring,” CBS News producer Joey Annunziato, a passenger on the flight from Charlotte, said in a video recorded from his seat just moments after impact.
“Everyone shot forward in their seats and it was kind of a little chaotic as soon as it happened. We were shocked at what happened.”
Annunziato added that his plane was moving at a “decent clip” when the collision unfolded.

