Two United Airlines Boeing 737-900s made contact with each other while taxiing at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Nov. 18, the carrier said in a statement.
Flight 544, bound for Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport with 101 passengers and six crew members, struck the wing of Flight 2451 as it prepared to taxi for departure. Flight 2451, carrying 73 passengers and six crew members and heading to Orlando International Airport, had just pushed back from the gate when the collision occurred.
"United flight 544 was preparing to taxi when it made contact with the wing of United flight 2451, which had stopped after just pushing back from the gate," a spokesperson for the carrier told NTD News in an emailed statement. "Both planes returned to the gate and passengers deplaned normally. No injuries were reported. We arranged for new aircraft to take customers to their destination."
Fight 245 was scheduled to depart at 6:21 p.m., according to FlightAware data, while the other flight was scheduled to depart minutes prior. The delays exceeded two hours before both flights ultimately reached their final destinations.
Last month, a United flight collided with another plane while approaching its gate at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Flight 2652, arriving from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with 113 passengers, clipped the horizontal stabilizer of a stationary plane. No injuries resulted from that incident, though passengers experienced a 40-minute delay.
"I was shocked that I didn't feel something more, although when they separated the planes there was some shuddering," passenger Bill Marcus said of the Chicago collision. "I didn't realize anything had happened until the delay was announced."
In late September, an American Airlines flight was forced to abort its takeoff at Los Angeles International Airport when an AeroLogic flight crossed an active runway without authorization, the FAA said in a statement. Controllers immediately halted the American crew's takeoff. The two aircraft never came closer than 5,200 feet, the FAA said.
In October, a JetBlue Airbus A320 encountered a flight control malfunction while traveling from Cancun to Newark, forcing an emergency diversion to Tampa International Airport. Multiple passengers were injured and hospitalized following the abrupt altitude drop. JetBlue removed the plane from service pending inspection.
Other incidents have included an American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix making an unscheduled landing at Washington Dulles International Airport in August after a passenger's electronic device caught fire. United also dealt with an emergency in July when a Boeing 787 heading to Munich experienced a left engine malfunction shortly after takeoff from Washington Dulles, prompting multiple "mayday" calls.
According to National Transportation Safety Board data, there have been 239 fatal plane crashes and 1023 non-fatal crashes in 2025, though these figures reflect a continued global downward trend in fatal airline accidents since 2019.