A Delta jet’s wingtip clipped an Air Canada plane under tow at LAX

Delta Air Lines Flight 7, an Airbus A350 carrying 275 passengers and 15 crew toward Tokyo Haneda, struck an Air Canada Boeing 777 at Los Angeles International Airport at about 10:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Oct. 6. The Federal Aviation Administration says the Delta jet’s left wingtip clipped the horizontal stabilizer of Air Canada Flight 785. No injuries were reported, but both aircraft were pulled for inspection and the Air Canada jet’s return trip to Toronto was cancelled.

The contact happened on the airfield rather than on a runway, and airport operations carried on normally through the day. What remains unsettled is the sequence that put a wingtip into a tail. The FAA’s account is preliminary, and the latest coverage shows no agency has yet said why the towed 777 sat where it did or who bore responsibility.

The FAA’s account of the wingtip and stabilizer contact

The federal record is short. The FAA’s accident and incident statement list places the event in Los Angeles around 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 6 and says Delta Flight 7 was taxiing for departure when its left wingtip clipped the horizontal stabilizer of Air Canada Flight 785. It adds that the Air Canada flight was being towed when it stopped short of its gate, and it tells passengers to contact the airlines for more information. The entry names no aircraft types and assigns no blame.

Wire reporting that The National News Desk distributed through KMPH repeated that language and added the first human detail: a Delta passenger described a big jolt and an abrupt stop. TMZ, which first reported the collision, published images that appeared to show a large gash in the tail section of the Air Canada aircraft. An Air Canada spokesperson said there were no reported injuries, and the same report noted that it was not clear how many people were aboard either plane.

Two widebodies, a Tokyo departure and a cancelled return to Toronto

Later reports filled in the aircraft. Delta’s flight was the A350 bound for Tokyo, and Delta told reporters it had 275 customers and 15 crew members aboard, according to CP24’s Bryann Aguilar. The Air Canada flight was a Boeing 777 that had arrived from Toronto, and the airline said it was taking the jet out of service for inspection and repairs. Delta said its maintenance crews and airport teams were assessing its own aircraft.

Air Canada did not disclose how many people were on Flight 785, and no source reviewed for this article supplies that figure. Matthew Klint of Live and Let’s Fly, writing from Los Angeles, reported that Air Canada cancelled Flight 786, the 777’s scheduled return to Toronto, which left hundreds of passengers to be rebooked. He did not give a number, and registrations quoted for the two airframes differ between outlets, so they are left out here.

Delta’s own statement was brief. It said that while taxiing at Los Angeles International Airport a Delta aircraft made contact with an Air Canada aircraft, apologized for the experience and the delay, and said customer and employee safety came first.

A passenger’s version against the tow described by the FAA

Not every account matches the federal summary. ABC7 Los Angeles reported that an unnamed Delta passenger told Eyewitness News the plane was pulling away from the gate and heading for the runway when the Air Canada plane appeared to move into its path. The same report said a piece of the Delta plane’s wing, described as its winglet, was torn off and stayed lodged in the 777’s stabilizer.

That description sits uneasily beside the FAA’s statement that the 777 was under tow and had stopped. The two can be reconciled only if a towed aircraft was still rolling or its tail still projected into a taxi route, and no official has said either was so. A passenger’s view from a window is a single vantage point, and the FAA has not endorsed or rejected it.

Radio traffic adds a little. Aerocorner’s summary of the air traffic audio says the Air Canada crew told ground control they had felt a shudder and asked whether everything looked right, while the Delta pilot reported an issue with the wing tip and stopped. Both crews appear to have noticed the strike at once, which fits the picture of a low-speed clip rather than a high-energy impact.

What investigators still have to establish at LAX

The ABC7 report said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified, but this review found no NTSB case record or preliminary report for the event. The FAA described the matter as under investigation and had published no finding on cause. Until either agency does, every explanation circulating online about taxiway closures, tug operators or wingtip clearance is conjecture rather than a result.

Helwing Villamizar of Airways Magazine, in an explainer on widebody taxiway clearance at LAX, lays out the questions an investigation would have to answer. They include the full taxi and tow instructions and readbacks, which controller or ramp tower held authority over each aircraft, where each jet sat relative to the clearance space, and what the wing walkers and tug crew saw. Villamizar notes that a stopped tow and a wingtip contact do not by themselves show which action or condition caused the collision, and that remains the state of the record as this is written.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview