Ground crew pushes AA170 into parked catering truck at LAX 5/13/13

[FWAAA]

Whoops!

First hand report by a passenger:

It was hard to tell. The truck was parked and the wing walker started to give the go ahead. All of a sudden he started throwing Xs into the air with his guide sticks. Originally I thought the plane drove into the truck, but the truck was a good few feet off the plane it was catering (further than the plank extends from the truck). It is possible the truck started backing up as the plane started pushback.

The walker immediately ran to the truck to yell something...tough to tell who was at fault.

Anyways, it was cancelled. They found a 767 and combined ours with the next flight, although many are rolled over to even later.

Would have taken compensation, but have a 4p meeting that I will be late for. Business, not pleasure.

Edit: I now see legs down in the picture. Truck must have been parked. Looks like the walker is in some serious trouble.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-aadvantage/1466757-anyone-else-stuck-aa170-05-13-13-wing-struck-pushback-into-catering-truck.html

Photo of aftermath:

http://i.imgur.com/PUEQGNR.jpg

Those darned catering trucks, always in the way!

 

[tadjr]

If nothing has been moved in the picture, how do you block a gate where a plane being pushed back on the next gate can hit a catering truck at the door of the plane next door or was the plane being pushed back not a plane that should have been parked on that gate to begin with? ie 757 but only 737 capable.

 

[jimntx]

Tadjr, careful now. You are about to enter the wonderful world of AA. Using logic in connection with AA operations is a serious violation of behavior standards. It's considered the same as talking dirty on the job. (It's called a Rule 32 violation.)

 

[JFK Fleet Service]

Yeah, those catering trucks actually are always in the way.At LGA they swoop in and in most cases are leaning on the horn to get to the service door before we get bag one off the goddamned airplane.

It's comical though, during the day they have guidemen and move three feet then stop, wands, the whole nine yards, at night it is the Indy 500 with the trucks whipping in without guidemen and setting up before the bridge is even on the plane.

 

[wings396]

Something is strange in that pict. The truck is in position on the other AC, and appears to be outside of the parking zone line.

 

[FWAAA]

Something is strange in that pict. The truck is in position on the other AC, and appears to be outside of the parking zone line.

I think tadjr hit it on the head - someone put the wrong airplane type at one or both of the gates or one or both weren't parked on the proper lines. Both planes appear to be 738s - the flight pushing back (170) is typically flown by a 738 and the parked plane looks like another 738. .

The frequent flyer eye-witness said that the adjacent, parked plane was at Gate 47B, which, if true, means that the LAX-LAS flight 170 was pushing back from Gate 49, and that makes no sense, because the wing of a 738 at 49 would be far behind the 1R service door of a plane at 47B.

It definitely happened, as the FAA/NTSB has a prelim online report of the incident, but the witness must have jumbled the gate info.

If the pushed-back 738 was at gate 48B, then its port wingtip may very well have been near the front of a plane parked at 49, and if things weren't parked properly, I can see how the overlap would have resulted.