SIA plane clips tail of Spirit Airlines plane in US airport, all passengers had to disembark, 6 hour delay

While getting ready to depart for Singapore, a Singapore Airlines plane clipped its right wing with the tail of a Spirit Airlines plane at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, on the morning of Mar. 3.

It happened as the Singapore Airlines plane was pushing back from a gate, near where the Spirit plane was parked for de-icing, ABC7 cited the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saying.

The planes were in an area where air traffic control does not direct aircraft movements, the FAA added.

Deplaned

The incident forced both planes back to the gate, and all passengers deplaned normally.

There were no injuries.

The Spirit plane was taken out of service for inspection, while Singapore Airlines cleared its aircraft to fly after an inspection.

The 19-hour flight to Singapore ended up taking off at 4pm, after a delay of about six hours, according to CBS News.

As for the Spirit plane, the airline said it was working to get passengers to their destinations as soon as possible, ABC7 reported on Mar. 4.

The FAA has been investigating the incident.

'So much tension'

A passenger on the Singapore Airlines plane posted a video of himself explaining the situation after the incident, likely before disembarking.

"We didn't even feel it. There was no danger to anyone here, but we will not be flying," he said.

He told CBS News that the pilot went on the intercom 20 minutes after the incident to tell the passengers "something happened", and then he saw the damaged tail of the Spirit plane.

"There's a kind of irony there that the world's longest flight is about to become longer over something that happened in the first one minute as we pulled out," he said.

"There's already so much tension, and this just adds to that. So anyone who's afraid of flying will just be more worried."

This happened within the hour on @SingaporeAir flight SQ21, EWR to SIN, world’s longest flight at 19 hours, 10 min.

During the first minute as we pulled out, our plan’s wingtip hit a @SpiritAirlines tail. Don’t know whose fault it is, but you can see the damage in this video.… pic.twitter.com/t3rN30mkoh

— Sree Sreenivasan (sreenet.substack.com) (@sree) March 3, 2026

Top images from @sree/X and shawnanggg/Unsplash