JFK plane collision Air France jumbo hits Delta commuter plane

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An amateur video recording has captured the moment an Air France jumbo jet smashed into the tail fin of a commuter plane causing it to spin by 90 degrees.The footage emerged after the incident at New York's JFK airport. Eye witnesses said they saw damage to one of the wings of the A380 which has subsequently been taken in for inspection.
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Crash: The Air France moments before impacting the much smaller Comair CRJ business type jet

...moments later the smaller jet is spun 90 degrees...

...before coming to a rest after being tossed around like a toy on the tarmac at JFK

Air accident investigators have launched an inquiry to find out how the incident occurred at 8.09pm local time yesterday.No passengers or crew were reported to have been injured in the crash, but some onboard described feeling the impact.

The Super-Jumbo A380 in Stats

Cost: $375.3 millionPassengers: 525 people in three-class configuration or up to 853 people in all-economy classSpace: 5,146square feet of floor space; 49% more than the current next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400 with 3,453square feetThe Airbus A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France, and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore AirlinesFlying to Paris on the Air France flight, a correspondent for US broadcaster CNN said he felt a 'slight rumble akin to hitting a patch of rough pavement.'He also said that about a foot of the Air France superjumbo's left wing was visibly damaged.Communication from the John F. Kennedy airport's ground control! records suggest that the A380 was instructed to go to a runway and was cleared to turn left onto a taxiwayto wait.They gave way to another plane heading in the opposite direction but less than a minute later the pilots of the Comair CRJ told controllers: 'Send a truck, they just hit us at (taxiway) Mike,' according to flightglobal.com.An Air France spokesman said: 'Air France confirms an A380 operating flight 007 on April 11 between JFK andParis-Charles de Gaulle, with 495 passengers and 25 crew on board, struck with its left wing the tail of a Comair CRJ-700 which was parkingat JFK.

Damaged: The Airbus A380 sits on the tarmac at JFK, too badly damaged to fly

Clipped: The wing tip of the Airbus A380 can be seen here clearly damaged by the impact with the smaller aircraft'This collision caused only material damage. The two aircraft have been immobilised and the passengers were given accommodation or placed on (other) flights.'Air France, Europe's largest airline has four Airbus superjumbos in its fleet but has switched to a smaller aircraft on flights to Tokyo due to a drop in demand following last month's Japan earthquake, leaving spare capacity to replace the A380 on New York trips.

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It is due to take delivery of two more A380s in coming weeks and plans to add Washington, Montreal and SanFrancisco to its A380 network that includes New York, Tokyo and Johannesburg. Air France says it plans to restore Tokyo A380 flights in September.The Airbus is the world's largest ! jetliner and has a wingspan of almost 80 metres. In November Qantas grounded its entire fleet after one of the planes had to make an emergency landing when part of one of its engines disintegrated over Indonesia.