Two aircraft collided while taxiing at Miami International Airport, with air traffic control audio capturing the moment one pilot reported the incident.
Audio published by ATC indicates that a UPS aircraft struck a Copa Airlines plane shortly after it landed in Miami on Saturday night.
According to FlightAware, the Copa flight had just arrived from Panama City when the collision occurred.
‘Somebody hit us,’ the pilot said. An air traffic controller replied: ‘UPS 358, you’re supposed to give way to the 73 there.’
After a brief exchange that was largely unintelligible, the controller asked: ‘UPS 358, did you hit that aircraft?’
‘Yeah, we went too far and he clipped us with his wing,’ the pilot eventually responded.
Fox Sports journalist Andy Slater, who posted about the incident on X, said the nose of one aircraft collided with the other plane’s wing tip.
Slater also reported that two people aboard the Copa flight had complained of back pain. However, a fire department source told him the incident was minor.
Officials later told the Daily Mail that nobody aboard either aircraft was injured and that the collision did not disrupt airport operations.
According to FlightAware, the aircraft had just landed after flying in from Panama City when it was struck
ATC audio indicated that a UPS aircraft collided with a Copa Airlines plane shortly after it landed in Miami on Saturday night. The airport is pictured here on Friday
Air traffic control communications indicated that the incident involved a UPS aircraft, one of which is pictured in this stock image
A spokesperson for the airport told the Daily Mail: ‘At approximately 9:15 p.m., an arriving aircraft and a departing aircraft made contact with each other at the intersection of two taxiways.’
‘There are no reported injuries, and flights are being directed to other taxiways, so there is no impact to airport operations at this time.’
The Daily Mail has contacted UPS and Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue for further comment.
The incident followed a chaotic period for air travel across the country, after a nationwide ground stop was ordered on Friday.
Around 50,000 flights were scheduled across the US when the ground stop began, with 30,000 having been completed, officials said.
Of the 40,000 flights scheduled for Saturday, officials estimated that approximately 4,000 to 5,000 could be canceled.
The shutdown was the first since January 11, 2023, when a key Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) computer system malfunctioned. It was also only the second such stoppage since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
At a news conference on Saturday, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the preliminary cause appeared to involve outdated equipment at a ‘remote location.’
The aircraft collision came after a chaotic Friday and Saturday for US aviation, following a nationwide ground stop on Friday
Americans faced the longest aviation stoppage since 9/11 on Friday after an exceptionally rare ground stop stranded approximately 1.5 million passengers
Duffy said contractor L3Harris had been replacing outdated technology at a ‘remote location’ when the air traffic control communications problem began.
He said maintenance work was underway at at least one of four remote FAA sites, where lines were being switched from old copper wire to fiber before communications failed.
Duffy described L3Harris as the department’s ‘legacy provider’ and accused the contractor of failing to ‘meet the moment,’ resulting in the outage.
‘What we’re working to determine was whether we had incompetence – meaning, was it user error or installation error from L3Harris — or did they install a faulty router? We haven’t determined what the fault was. Was it the router? Or were they not doing great work for us at L3Harris?’ he said.
Duffy said the wire being replaced was so old that it was being phased out, prompting the scheduled maintenance.
He explained that the switch from copper to fiber overloaded other routers and disrupted radar feeds, making it difficult for air traffic controllers to communicate.
Duffy stressed that officials did not believe the outage was caused by a cyberattack. He said communications resumed after the problem was identified at the FAA’s remote site.
L3Harris is a technology provider with contracts across multiple US agencies. Earlier this year, the company announced a proposed partnership with the Department of War to manufacture rocket motors used to power US and allied missiles.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, the company said it had been ‘modernizing the communications infrastructure supporting the National Airspace System in close coordination with the FAA.’