A Korean Air jet arriving from Seoul-Incheon has collided with an Air Namibia aircraft at Frankfurt Airport resulting in the grounding of both jets and long delays for affected passengers.
The Korean Air Boeing 777 crashed with it’s horizontal stabilizer into the wingtip of the Air Namibia Airbus A330.
The busy traffic at Frankfurt Airport paired with carelessness of at least one of the cockpit crew (which one hasn’t been determined yet) has caused substantial damage on the two aircraft involved, thankfully without any injuries to passengers and crew.
The Korean Herald reported about the incident and subsequent delay yesterday.
Korean Air flight KE 905 collided with another plane on the taxiway in Frankfurt, Germany, on Saturday, delaying the subsequent flight bound for Incheon, the air carrier said Sunday.
The incident involving the flight that departed from Incheon occurred Saturday at 6:20 p.m. (local time). While waiting on the taxiway after landing at Frankfurt Airport, the airplane’s horizontal stabilizer located at its right wing crashed into the end of an Air Namibia’s plane left wing.
According to Korean Air, 241 passengers and 20 Korean Air captain and flight attendants were on board, none of them were injured.
However, the subsequent flight KE 906 bound for Incheon was delayed for about 21 hours. All passengers who were waiting at the gate were provided with accommodation and transportation options, the air carrier said.
It added that the exact cause behind the collision or whose fault it is remains unknown.
Korean Air said it will substitute a new aircraft for flight KE 906, which will depart Frankfurt at 4:30 p.m. local time.
While the incoming passengers were all able to disembark and go their merry ways, the outbound passengers were not so lucky. The flight was cancelled that day as can be seen on Flightradar24:
The departure time of Korean Air ex FRA is quite late so that it’s almost impossible to accommodate the passengers with rebookings to other carriers.
Passengers should be eligible for EC261 compensation as the flight departed the EU. Unlikely that an earlier tarmac accident that takes the plane out of service counts as extraordinary circumstance.
Conclusion
I really wonder which of the two planes strayed away from their taxiway and got too close to the other one. There will be a mandatory investigation by the Luftfahrtbundesamt (LBA) which is the FAA/NTSB counterpart in Germany.
Impossible to say who is to blame without a map where the accident occurred or to see which of the two planes had the right of way in case this happened during a turn.
