A United Airlines flight from Venice struck a light pole and seemingly grazed the top of a tractor trailer as it touched down in Newark on Sunday afternoon. Somehow, the truck driver suffered only minor injuries, and nobody on the plane was hurt.
There has been some confusion as to whether the plane struck the pole, and the pole alone made contact with the truck, or the plane hit both. New Jersey State Police said in a preliminary investigation, per WABC-TV New York, that both “a landing tire and the underside” of United Flight 169 did in fact make contact with the top of the truck’s trailer. Photos acquired by WNBC show damage to the plane, including a gash in its body and scuffs along a tire’s sidewall. The felled pole apparently hit a Jeep that was also traveling on the NJ Turnpike.
Amazingly, there is dashcam footage from the truck itself, which you can see in the ABC News video embedded below. While it’s certainly alarming, it doesn’t give us much insight as to what’s happening outside the vehicle. We hear the howl of a closing plane, see the driver look up and, in an instant, there’s a loud crash and the camera tumbles to the ground.
United flight hits light pole while landing
The driver was thankfully able to pull over and receive medical attention for cuts on his arm due to shattered glass. The plane held 221 passengers and 10 crew members, all of which made it off unharmed in an otherwise safe landing. The plane, a Boeing 767-400, was said to have “sustained only minor damage,” and the National Transportation Safety Board is currently gathering information to figure out precisely what happened, as is the Federal Aviation Administration.
The truck was operated by Baker’s Express, hauling baked goods for the H&S Family of Bakeries. H&S owner Chuck Paterakis initially told ABC News that “the trailer is not damaged, and the bread product was not touched,” though, given the apparent force of the collision as we can see from the footage, it’s hard to believe how the truck could’ve emerged unscathed.
United Airlines issued a statement, saying, “We will conduct a rigorous flight safety investigation into the incident and our crew has been removed from service as part of the process.”
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