The Saturday Morning Post: Adventures in Flying: When Things Go Thud

I changed planes in Charlotte North Carolina one morning, I had been flying since the day before. The last leg was on a small regional jet, the last leg home from my first trip to Alaska. 

We had settled in, I was talking to the guy sitting next to me who was flying out to drive home a car he had bought without seeing. The plane started to push back from the gate and it went thud. It felt like we had backed over a trash can or something. The plane pulled forward a few feet, backed up again and this time I could hear metal tearing.  We came to a stop, the pilot came out of the cockpit, opened the door and charged off shouting "what in the hell have you done to my airplane!" 

It took a couple of minutes for the flight attendants to assess what was going on, and make a call to the terminal. 

What had happened? 

We had backed into another airplane, twice.  

We would need to get off the plane while the damage was assessed.  As I got off, I looked over and the end one wing was torn loose and hanging down.  It didn't take long for the airline to say, please go stand in line at customer service for rebooking.  

I was flown to an airport, about 90 miles from where I headed, put on a chartered van and driven onto the airport. Several hours late, I did arrive home that day.