Passenger After Planes Clip Each Another: 'Wing Was Mangled'
DENVER (CBS4) - Passengers who arrived in Denver on Friday more than six hours overdue after the plane they were on clipped wings with another during taxiing say it was clear right away there was a problem.
CBS4 interviewed several frustrated and exhausted passengers who were on a Frontier Airlines flight Thursday night at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix when it was on the tarmac and clipped wings with a Southwest Airlines plane. They had to get off the plane after the incident and eventually got on a different Frontier plane.
Brit Ullrich was on the Frontier plane, which was damaged.
"We looked out the window and saw that the end of the wing was all mangled up and so we just kind of all knew that we weren't going to go anywhere after that," Brit Ullrich said at the baggage claim area of Denver International Airport.
The passengers on the Southwest plane wound up making it to their destination -- also DIA -- at 12:30 a.m. on Friday. The Frontier passengers didn't make it in until 4:30 a.m.
"It was a loud noise and an abrupt stop. It wasn't like anything violent, it was just ... you felt it," said Jake Orsborn, another Frontier passenger.
The National Transportation Safety Board will not investigate what happened in Phoenix because there were no injuries and limited damage. The Federal Aviation Administration will investigate what happened.
One passenger told CBS4 he was on the flight from Phoenix to Denver because of a voucher he got from the previous flight he had, which was also delayed. His plan was to go skiing at Copper Mountain on Friday, but now will have to get some sleep instead. He received a $400 voucher for future travel on Frontier because of Thursday night's incident.
"It was a long night, but we really made the best of it," Ullrich said. "There was five of us that didn't know each other before the night but kind of the adversity of it all has kind of brought us together."
"We kind of stuck together the whole night and had a lot of fun together, so that made the whole experience a lot better," one of Ullrich's new friends said.
