A UPS cargo Boeing 767 and a Copa Airlines Boeing 737 collided on Saturday night at Miami International Airport in an incident that left two people receiving care from emergency services.
The contact occurred around 9:15 p.m. (Eastern Time) at the intersection of two taxiways, while one aircraft was arriving at the airport and the other was preparing for departure, according to the television station Univision.
The UPS plane was designated flight 358, which was scheduled to cover the route between Miami and Bogotá, Colombia. The Copa Airlines flight, identified as CM427, had arrived from Panama City.
Greg Chin, director of Communications for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, confirmed the incident and specified that two individuals received medical attention on-site from the county's Fire and Rescue Department, although neither required hospitalization.
Air traffic control recordings captured a pilot exclaiming, "Someone hit us." According to those records, the controller had previously instructed the UPS flight to yield to the Copa aircraft.
The crew of the cargo plane responded that they had advanced too far and that the wing of the Boeing 737 had brushed against them. However, neither the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) nor the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have officially established the causes or responsibilities of the incident.
After the collision, the authorities redirected other aircraft to alternative taxiways. The airport reported that its operations were not significantly affected, the source added.
The accident occurred amid a crisis in U.S. air traffic. On Friday, the FAA ordered a nationwide halt to all takeoffs due to a communication failure during infrastructure modernization work carried out by the contractor L3Harris Technologies.
The interruption, which affected all 22 regional air traffic control centers, lasted more than four and a half hours and resulted in over 6,500 cancellations and nearly 10,000 delays nationwide.
The FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, estimated that airlines would cancel between 4,000 and 5,000 of the approximately 41,000 flights scheduled for this Saturday. He also warned that schedules would not return to normal until the end of Sunday.
At Miami airport, FlightAware reported 185 cancellations and 190 delays overnight this Saturday, figures that reflect the aftermath of the chaos that began the night before.
The airport had already been the scene of another serious accident in September when a Boeing 767 cargo plane operated for Amazon Air veered off the runway during landing, resulting in five fatalities.
Despite the accumulated incidents and operational disruptions, Bedford defended the safety of the U.S. air system and assured that it has multiple backup levels. "I am very, very confident that the system is operating today with the same safety as it did two weeks ago," he stated.
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