In Brief: Southwest 737 Struck By Unmanned Pickup Truck at Boston Airport
Jesse Tabit March 17, 2015
A Southwest Airlines aircraft was struck by an unmanned pickup truck Monday morning at Logan International Airport (BOS), delaying the flight for more than two hours. Approximately 119 flyers were in the terminal waiting to board WN771 to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) when the incident occurred.
The pickup truck was reportedly left in gear after the driver exited it, causing the vehicle to roll into the empty Boeing 737’s engine. No injuries were reported, and a replacement aircraft was flown in so passengers could resume their journey. A Southwest representative said the airline is investigating the crash and working to mend any inconveniences caused by the flight interruption.
For additional information on this story, visit Daily Mail.
To discuss this story, visit this FlyerTalk forum.
[Photo: Cara Strobel via Twitter]
You’re Reading
It's just amazing this hasn't happened before, at least not that I know of. I know EXACTLY how this happened. Employees are in and out of those trucks very often, if they're running connections or cargo, whatever it is they jump in and out all the time. Almost no one uses the E-brakes, so they're usually left running and just in park (many of the ramp vehicles only have Forward, Neutral, Reverse) you jump off, throw the bags on the belt, unhook your carts and then jump back in. You do it 100 times a day. This SHOULDN'T ever happen, but honestly I've seen it a few times, just never hit a plane. I've seen a runaway cart come unhooked from a string of 4, roll on it's own at like 25km/h towards planes, it was a bit at a distance (and it wasn't my company) so there wasn't much we could do other than watch and hope it didn't hit. Luckily the wheels are small and it swerved, then tipped over and thankfully was empty. But that could've been disastrous. So my guess is what happened here is the employee "parked" went to do something and accidentally left it in gear. You have your hearing protection in you might not hear the vehicle lurch away. Then if the employee goes inside or whatever and doesn't happen to look back and see it, boom, runaway vehicle. It's gonna be fairly hard for someone to stop it too unless they have the speed and balls to get alongside it, jump in and stop the thing.
The crash??? Gotta love the media!!
Why - because human beings make mistakes and breach rules and regulatons. How - the driver left the vehicle unsecured.
Why did this happen? How could it happen?