Southwest plane clips wing after colliding with American Airlines jet at LaGuardia

A Southwest Airlines plane’s wing collided with an American Airlines plane as it was taxiing on the tarmac at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday, airline and Port Authority officials said.

The Southwest plane, en route to Denver, “came in contact with another aircraft that was awaiting a gate” at approximately 11 a.m. ET, Southwest said in a statement to Yahoo News. There were no injuries reported, and it is not clear how the collision occurred.

The 143 passengers and five crew members aboard the Southwest flight safely deplaned the aircraft and were bussed back to the terminal.

Arí Isaacman Astles, a growth strategy editor at the New York Times, was one of them.

Another Southwest passenger presented a different view of the clipped wing.

The Boeing 737 sustained damage to its left wing and was taken out of service for repairs, the airline said.

The American Airlines jet, bound for Dallas, had 149 passengers and six crew members aboard. The flight, which had been scheduled to depart at 11:50 a.m., was delayed until 3:10 p.m. after the plane's tail wing was damaged.

Airports throughout the East Coast were experiencing delays because of a powerful storm system that brought heavy rains and strong winds to the region. According to NBC News, dozens of flights were scrapped at LaGuardia in New York even before Tuesday's incident.

The same storm system was expected to bring snow to the Great Lakes on Christmas Eve, threatening holiday travelers in the Midwest.