Moments before the plane collided with a truck near Newark Airport, a loud engine noise confused the truck driver.
Heartbreaking dashcam video captured the exact moments a United Airlines flight landing at Newark Liberty International Airport collided with a streetlight and a tractor-trailer on a nearby highway in a bizarre accident Sunday. A Boeing 767 was flying from Venice, Italy to Newark with more than 200 passengers and 10 crew members on board. The truck driver suffered injuries but not life-threatening injuries and the plane landed normally and no one was injured.CNN reported that a preliminary investigation blamed the crash on the plane’s landing gear and the plane’s undercarriage tire, after it first hit a pole and a tractor-trailer. After this the pole hit a jeep.“The driver of the tractor-trailer suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to an area hospital,” New Jersey State Police spokesman SFC Charles Marchan said in a statement.Chuck Paterakis, senior vice president of transportation for Schmidt’s Bakery and co-owner of H&S Family of Bakeries, told CNN that the truck driver, identified as Warren Bordley of Baltimore, was heading north on the Turnpike to deliver bread products to the Newark Airport depot.Dashcam video from the truck showed Bordley singing seconds before the plane’s landing gear tires hit the truck. The driver got confused due to the loud noise of the plane’s engine. The next moment, only shards of glass were flying.CNN reported that according to recordings of air traffic control communications captured by LiveATC.net, the pilots and air traffic control were not aware that the plane had struck a light pole upon landing. The 767 was instructed to taxi to the gate as other aircraft continued to land on the same runway. According to another recording from LiveATC.net, air traffic controllers reported “a hole in the side of the airplane” to an operations vehicle preparing to inspect the runway about half an hour after landing.“The aircraft landed safely, transported normally to the gate, and no passengers or crew were injured,” United said. He said the plane’s crew has been removed from service pending investigation.