Flights canceled after 2 planes collide at Logan's Delta terminal by Dave Wedge Saturday, March 25, 2000

Two flights were canceled and more than 100 passengers had to be put on other planes after two jets collided at the Delta terminal at Logan International Airport yesterday.

``The driver was backing up and he didn't see the other plane and he hit it,'' Massport spokesman Phil Orlandella said. ``It hit the tail and did some damage to the rudder.''

No one was injured in the 3:30 p.m. accident. The collision occurred when the pilot of a Delta MD80 backed up between gates 26 and 28 outside Terminal C at Logan. The pilot apparently struck a Delta 727 that was sitting at a gate, damaging the plane. Both flights were canceled and passengers were re-booked onto other flights, Orlandella said.

``They all got onto other planes,'' he said. ``It was a minor accident.''

The MD80, Flight 1851, had 120 passengers on board and was bound for Atlanta. The 727 was Flight 1865 heading for New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Massport officials were unsure how many passengers were on the 727.

Harvard University Professor Lee Cott and a group of 12 graduate students were on the plane that was hit and were on their way to New York to get a connecting charter flight to Havana, Cuba.

The group was slated to assist Cuban officials in developing a master plan for a section of Havana as part of an urban design project. ``We were sitting on the plane and all of a sudden, they made an announcement that said we'd been hit,'' Cott said. ``None of us felt anything.''

Cott and his class got off the plane with the rest of the passengers and were quickly put on another flight. He expected they would make their charter flight out of New York. No other flights were affected by the accident.

http://www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/lonw/plan03252000.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 25, 2000