Over 100 passengers on a Spirit Airlines flight got a New Year's Eve surprise when their plane clipped a parked jet at a Florida Airport while taxiing.
Officials say no one was injured when the wingtip of the Airbus A320 carrying 162 passengers clipped the tail of another plane, according to Local 10.
"After landing and while taxiing to the gate, our aircraft made contact with another parked aircraft," Spirit spokeswoman Misty Pinson told Local 10. "There were no injuries and customers deplaned at the gate as normal."
The plane that was hit was a US Airways jet which was parked in an area that was away from the gate where planes are stored overnight, so there was no one on board when the accident occurred, but both planes were damaged.
The tail of the US Airways jet had a gash on it and the plane is out of service to undergo inspection and repair. The Spirit jet is still in service and continued flying. Neither plane had a fuel leak.
The Federal Aviation Administration made some changes in September to try to prevent accidents involving plane wingtips. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended that large planes that have wingtips that aren't easy to see from the cockpit install cameras to monitor the wings.
This was done after 12 accidents involving plane wingtips hitting other planes occurred since 1993. The last time an accident like this occurred was in May when a Boeing 747 hit a regional jet at O'Hare airport in Chicago. Before that, a 767 hit a regional jet in Boston in July 2011 and in April 2011 another collision occurred at JFK airport in New York.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
