Korean Air jet hits Cathay plane at Japan airport

A KOREAN Air airliner “struck” an empty Cathay Pacific plane while taxiing at a snow-hit Japanese airport yesterday, with both airlines saying there were no injuries.

The incident at New Chitose Airport serving Sapporo came two weeks after a near-catastrophic collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport between a Japan Airlines airliner and a smaller coast guard plane.

“Our aircraft, which was stationary at the time with no customers nor crew onboard, was struck by a Korean Air A330 which was taxiing past,” Cathay Pacific said in a statement.

Korean Air also confirmed there were no injuries among the 276 passengers and 13 crew on board its Airbus A330-300 that had been set to depart for Seoul Incheon from New Chitose on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The airline said its plane “came into contact” with the Cathay aircraft at 5:35pm “during pushback... when the third-party ground handler vehicle slipped due to heavy snow.

“There were no injuries and the airline is cooperating with all relevant authorities,” the carrier added.

The operator of the airport, Hokkaido Airports, did not comment.

Neither airline gave information on the amount of damage done but both said that their passengers needed to be transferred to other planes.

Airport firefighters were on standby, but no oil leaks or fires had been confirmed, according to Hokkaido Cultural Broadcasting.

Hokkaido has been hit by a cold front in recent days with heavy snow warnings issued in several cities.

According to reports, 46 flights were cancelled yesterday.

In the January 2 incident, all 379 people on board the Japan Airlines Airbus escaped just before the jet was engulfed in flames. Five of the six people on the smaller aircraft died.

(AFP)