A Copa Airlines passenger plane and a UPS cargo plane collided on Saturday evening on one of the runways at Miami International Airport. Two people were slightly injured and received care on site, without the need for hospital transport.
According to airport authorities, quoted by ABC News, the incident occurred around 9:15 PM local time. The Copa Airlines plane, a Boeing 737, had just landed from Panama City and was heading to the terminal. The UPS aircraft, a Boeing 767, was taxiing to take off for Bogotá, Colombia.
According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the tip of the Copa plane’s wing struck the nose of the UPS aircraft. Air traffic controllers had asked the UPS crew to yield to the passenger plane. The FAA has opened an investigation to determine the circumstances of the collision.
On board the Copa plane were 166 passengers and six crew members. All subsequently disembarked, and the aircraft was brought to the terminal, the company reported. UPS announced that its crew is safe and will cooperate with authorities.
The collision did not block airport operations: other aircraft were directed to alternate taxiways, airport representatives said.
The incident occurred during a weekend when U.S. air travel was already heavily disrupted. On Friday, the FAA halted nationwide departures for nearly five hours after issues appeared with communication and radar systems used for air traffic control.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the problems arose during network modernization work, when a router began to overload other equipment. Authorities are checking whether it was a defective device or an installation error.
Approximately 9,200 flights were canceled on Friday, and over 6,400 on Saturday, according to FlightAware data cited by Reuters. FAA chief Bryan Bedford estimated that airline schedules would largely return to normal by Sunday evening, U.S. time.