Close shave for passengers as wings of 2 airplanes collide on JFK airport taxiway

In a near-miss incident, wings of a plane was clipped by another on the taxiway at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York on Monday evening (27 November), causing a delay in their departures.

"No injuries were reported," the US' Federal Aviation Administration (Faa) said in a statement.

The planes involved in the accident were a Virgin Atlantic flight headed to London and a Cairo-bound Egypt Air flight. The former had to be towed away from the taxiway following the accident. The debris from the plane's wings were reportedly seen on the runway ground soon after the collision.

"Egypt Air Flight 986, a Boeing 777, was moving on Taxiway Kilo when its right wing touched the left wing of Virgin Atlantic Airlines Flight 4C, an Airbus A333 ... at about 7.45pm [ET]," the Faa statement read.

The flights had been scheduled to leave at 6.30pm EST for Cairo and London, respectively, from the airport. The aviation authority is planning to launch an investigation.

Meanwhile, a recording of a conversation between the Virgin Atlantic pilot and the air traffic control showed the pilot was pulling off the plane on to a side after spotting a "technical issue", ABC7 news reported.

"Uh Virgin 4-Charlie, we've got a technical issue at the moment...we're going to have to do some diagnosing," the pilot was reportedly heard telling the tower, which responded saying, "Virgin 4-Charlie-heavy, all right, disregard all that, pull off to the right, all the way to the right as far as you can on the run-up pad."

Just about two minutes later, the pilot reported the plane hit with another plane and a wing was clipped.

Pictures of the incident taken by passengers showed the Virgin jet's wing tip being loaded onto the back of a truck.

The Egypt Air flight went back to Terminal 4 on its own, but the Virgin Atlantic flight had to be towed away, officials said, according to the CW affiliate PIX 11.

This is not the first instance of plane wings getting clipped on a runway. In a similar incident in August this year, two Indonesian passenger jets suffered minor damage on the runway when a Wings Air ATR-72 was preparing for take-off and a larger Lion Air Boeing 737 clipped the ATR's right wing during landing at the Kualanamu International Airport (KIA) in Indonesia. None of the crew members or passengers were hurt in the incident.

In another incident the same month, a Delta Air Lines plane's wing crashed into the tail of an American Airlines aircraft at John F Kennedy International Airport.