Advertisement

Passenger jets back in service after clipping wings at Burbank Bob Hope Airport

By Chad Garland

One passenger jet clipped the wing of a second airliner while pulling away from the terminal at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank on Saturday morning, officials said.

It happened just before 7:30 a.m., as Flight 4721 was departing for Sacramento with 106 passengers aboard. It was being pushed back from the gate when it bumped Flight 2183, scheduled to depart for Phoenix with 114 passengers.

The planes had been parked at adjacent gates A-1 and A-2, said airport spokeswoman Lucy Burghdorf.

There were no reported injuries, and the passengers were moved to other flights. The jets — both Boeing 737s — belonged to Southwest Airlines and were taken out of service.

Burghdorf said the incident had been reported to the National Transportation Safety Board, which authorized the aircraft to be moved to gates A-6 and A-7. She confirmed that an investigation was underway.

An NTSB official did not return calls seeking comment.

Twitter user Janet McIntyre posted photos to the microblogging site Saturday showing one plane’s winglet against the horizontal stabilizer on the tail of the other plane along with the comment, “Not supposed to touch.” The winglet is the vertical extension of the main wing that helps save fuel.

McIntyre, who also posted that she was on the flight to Phoenix, said she watched the incident happen from her window, but many passengers didn’t even feel it.

Another social media user posted photos Sunday showing the winglet had been removed from the plane, but it appeared to have only cosmetic damage to the paint.

A spokeswoman for Southwest said in an email Tuesday that both aircraft involved in Saturday’s incident have been repaired and placed back into service.

It is standard protocol for observers on the ground to assist the pilots while the planes are being pushed back from the gate to avoid such incidents, she said, but she said she did not have additional details to share about the incident at that time.

“We will continue our internal investigation and use any findings to further advance our mission of safety,” she said.

--

Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland

Chad Garland

Chad Garland covered the city of Burbank and Bob Hope Airport for the Burbank Leader until 2016. Previously, he has covered Arizona’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., for Cronkite News Service and Oregon’s Legislature for the Associated Press. His work investigating questionable veterans’ charities as part of the award-winning News21 national investigative project “Back Home” earned a “Best in Business” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2013. Before becoming a reporter, he spent more than a decade in various assignments related to national defense. An Illinois native, his first California address was at Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. He has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University, as well as a diploma from the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where he learned to speak Russian.

Advertisement