Truck Hits Southwest Plane At BWI Airport

HANOVER, MD — A ground crew pickup truck slammed into a Southwest Airlines plane early Friday morning at Baltimore Washington Airport, injuring the truck driver and forcing passengers to sit on the plane for two hours, according to reports. Flight 6263 had just landed from Fort Lauderdale and was approaching a gate to disembark travelers when the accident occurred, passengers said on social media.

The collision happened just after 12:10 a.m. Monday. EMTs took the truck driver to a local hospital by ambulance; there has been no word on the extent of his injuries, WUSA reports.

BWI officials have not commented on the mishap, and the airport was operating normally Monday.

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Passengers on the plane shared comments and photos on Twitter and Instagram. One flier noted it's been a rough few weeks for the airline, which had a window crack last week in a flight and a woman killed when an engine exploded.

“We're so sorry for the trouble tonight in Baltimore. We appreciate your patience, and our team will do everything they can to get you all on your way as soon as possible,” a Southwest employee representative said on Twitter to an unhappy passenger.

So our @SouthwestAir flight just got in an accident with a pick up truck. Guess this makes me an airplane crash survivor...

On May 2 a Southwest Airlines flight carrying 76 people made an unplanned landing in Cleveland because of a cracked window in the passenger compartment. Flight WN957 took off from Chicago Midway headed for Newark when a passenger window cracked. No one was hurt during the incident and the aircraft maintained cabin pressure because of the multiple layers of window panes, the airline said.

The plane may have been a Boeing 737-700 aircraft. That unplanned landing came just weeks after a deadly disaster claimed the life of a Southwest passenger. On April 17, a woman was killed when a 737 jet engine caught fire and a piece of shrapnel pierced a window, partially sucking the woman out of the plane and forcing an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

The plane was carrying about 150 passengers and was headed from New York to Dallas. Jim Demetros, a Connecticut man, was on that flight. He said it was "very harrowing experience, for sure." Demetros said when the plane's oxygen masks were deployed, the crew did a great job of keeping passengers calm.

By then attention had already turned to the woman who was partially sucked out of the plan. She was frantically dragged back into the aircraft by a pair of passengers. She was the flight's only fatality, but other passengers suffered minor injuries, writes the Connecticut Post.

The Federal Aviation Administration then ordered an emergency inspection of all engines identical to the one that failed on that Southwest flight.

PHOTO: Southwest Airlines planes sit at their gates at Baltimore-Washington International Airport as flights are delayed due to technical issues at a Federal Aviation Administration center August 15, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. The FAA is investigating an automation problem with flight tracking at a center in Virginia that has caused delays in flight arrivals and departures in the Washington and New York City regions. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)