A tense situation emerged on Thursday when two jets collided in Miami near the gates at Miami International Airport. No one was injured, but hundreds of passengers were stuck for hours trying to make arrangements for another flight.
According to MIA spokesman Marc Henderson, there was only minor damage when the two jets collided in Miami, one on the wingtip and the other on its tail section. He said authorities were investigating both the cause of the accident and the condition of the jets that collided in Miami.
"Neither plane will be flying tonight," Henderson told The Miami Herald.
About 5:45 p.m., between Concourses J and H, an Aerolineas Argentinas Airbus arrived with 240 passengers on board and struck an Air France 777-300 plane readying at the gate to fly to Paris with some 350 passengers on board.
The passengers arriving from Argentina were allowed to exit the plane, but the Air France passengers were the ones who were stranded for hours while back up flights could be arranged. According to witness statements, Air France passengers got unruly while trying to plan new travel arrangements.
"The first altercation I saw was a group of guys that got fed up with people cutting in front of them," Alex Legion, a professional basketball player from Hungary told the Miami Herald. "The second altercation I saw was when people from business class started to cut the economy line and a lady and a guy got into an argument."
Among the stranded passengers was A group of four biology graduate students, a mother and an ecology professor from La Universidad de Valencia in Valencia, Spain had just boarded the Air France flight when the crash occurred. The group had spent five days at the International Biogeography Society conference at Florida International University and spent a few other days exploring the Everglades and the Florida Keys.
"The plane shook a bit but the hit wasn't strong enough to make it lose stability," said Aina Taberner, 29, a student in Valencia to the Miami Herald.
She stood in line hoping to make "reasonable travel arrangements" to get back home.
"We waited for about 30 minutes before we were asked to get off the plane," said the group's professor Jose Antonio Gil-Delgado. And he said it took them about an hour to pick up their luggage.
"The plane hadn't even moved from the gate," said student Jose Mora. "No one panicked. The damage was minimal."
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