Two planes clipped wings while taxiing at Reagan National Airport in Washington on Thursday afternoon, according to NBC News Washington.
Gregory Gillian, a passenger on one of the planes, captured video of at least part of the incident and shared it with the station.
NBC Washington’s Adam Tuss reported that the wingtip of American Airlines flight 5490 struck American Airlines flight 4522 on a taxiway at about 12:45 p.m. local time. He said flight 5490, a Bombardier CRJ 900, was headed to Charleston International Airport in South Carolina. Flight 4522, an Embraer E175, was headed to JFK International Airport in New York.
Officials at the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration have confirmed the incident, though no additional details about injuries or flight disruptions have been released.
The incident adds to growing concern over aviation safety in the United States. Since President Donald Trump took office in January and moved to gut the FAA and other federal agencies, a series of deadly and non-fatal aviation events have raised red flags across the country.
On Jan. 29, a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter collided in midair and crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. All 67 victims have now been identified. Just two days later, a medical transport Learjet crashed in Philadelphia, killing all six people onboard and one person on the ground. That crash left behind a massive fireball in a neighborhood shortly after the plane took off from a small nearby airport.
In February, a commuter flight in Alaska went down on sea ice, killing 10 people. Other troubling events have followed. A United Airlines flight from Chicago was forced to return to O’Hare after an unexpected issue in the cockpit. A separate aircraft at O’Hare struck a ground vehicle, critically injuring the tug’s driver.
Additional incidents have been reported at airports in Seattle and Houston. A Japan Airlines plane struck a parked Delta jet while taxiing at Seattle-Tacoma International. In Houston, a United flight caught fire on the wing during takeoff following an engine malfunction.
Security lapses have also made headlines. Dead stowaways were found inside the wheel wells of two separate aircraft, and a passenger recently opened an emergency exit door on a plane that was preparing for takeoff in Boston.
A Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Toronto crashed in February. While investigators haven’t determined the cause, the crash took place during active snowfall and followed two winter storms in the region. Air traffic control recordings from Toronto Pearson International Airport confirmed the plane had been cleared to land shortly after 2 p.m. local time. Controllers warned the pilots of turbulence caused by another aircraft in the landing path.
“It’s very rare to see something like this,” said John Cox, CEO of the aviation safety firm Safety Operating Systems and a former U.S. Air pilot who has worked on NTSB investigations. “We’ve seen a couple of takeoffs where airplanes have ended up inverted, but it’s pretty rare.”
Cox added that the CRJ900 is a proven aircraft capable of handling difficult weather. “The weather conditions were windy. The wind was out of the west at 27 to 35 knots, which is about 38 miles an hour. But the airplanes are designed and certified to handle that. The pilots are trained and experienced to handle that.”
According to data from the National Transportation Safety Board, more than 140 aviation crashes are currently under investigation across the United States. Three of those are in Washington state. In January alone, the NTSB opened 53 investigations, including seven fatal crashes. There were 71 investigations in February, with six deadly crashes. In March, the board investigated 16 crashes, three of which were fatal.
In 2024, the NTSB recorded 1,417 aviation crashes. Of those, 258 involved fatalities.
The FAA continues to face a critical shortage of air traffic controllers and technicians. Many have cited uncompetitive pay, long hours, intensive training, and mandatory retirements as key reasons for the staffing crisis. The situation has grown more urgent as incidents continue to increase and the number of qualified personnel continues to shrink.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FAA, has been vocal about the consequences of staff cuts.
“Now is not the time to fire technicians who fix and operate more than 74,000 safety-critical pieces of equipment like radars, navigational aids, and communications technology,” she wrote on X. “The FAA is already short 800 technicians, and these firings inject unnecessary risk into the airspace — in the aftermath of four deadly crashes in the last month. The FAA’s safety workforce needs to be a priority for this Administration.”