A United Airlines jet came dangerously close to disaster Sunday when it hit a semitrailer truck and light pole on the New Jersey Turnpike as it came in to land at Newark Liberty International Airport.
“A major catastrophe was avoided by feet,” said safety expert Steve Arroyo, who landed on that same short runway many times during his career at United. “Had it been another five feet lower, eight feet, I mean, no more than 10 feet, that plane would have been all over the New Jersey Turnpike.”
The driver of the bakery delivery truck was treated at a hospital for minor injuries, and the Boeing 767 flying in from Venice, Italy, with 231 people aboard was able to land safely. No one on the plane was hurt. Air traffic control audio suggests the incident may have created a hole in the side of the plane, but the airline and the National Transportation Safety Board haven’t confirmed that.
The NTSB said Monday afternoon that it has reclassified the incident as an accident because of the extent of the damage to the plane, but it didn’t provide any details.
Anyone who drives that section of Interstate 95 near the airport is likely used to seeing planes coming in low and crossing over all the lanes of traffic as the planes get ready to land, but never this low. Dash camera video from inside the truck shows the moment of impact and appears to show the truck toppling onto its side. Typically, semitrucks are 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) tall, so the plane was quite low.
