Miracles on the Turnpike: Inside the Terrifying Close Call at Newark Airport
The New Jersey Turnpike is notorious for heavy traffic, aggressive drivers, and stressful commutes. But on Sunday, May 3, 2026, motorists on Interstate 95 faced an entirely different kind of hazard—a commercial airliner flying low enough to touch.
In a shocking incident that has captured global attention, United Airlines Flight 169 from Venice, Italy, struck a bakery delivery truck and a light pole while attempting a difficult landing at Newark Liberty International Airport. While all 221 passengers and 10 crew members walked away unharmed, the collision has left aviation experts and drivers shaken, raising critical questions about runway safety margins.
A Seconds-From-Disaster Dashboard Video
The Boeing 767 was executing an approach over the highway at an unusually low altitude when disaster struck. Dashboard camera footage from inside the bakery truck captured a routine morning turning into a nightmare in a fraction of a second.
The driver, Warren Boardley, was singing to himself just moments before the plane’s heavy landing gear clipped the top of his cab. The impact shattered glass and left Boardley with cuts on his arm, but through sheer instinct, he managed to safely pull the vehicle over to the shoulder.
Speaking to CNN affiliate WJZ, the driver’s father, Warren Boardley Sr., expressed the sheer disbelief shared by many.“Out of all the things in the world, a plane?” Boardley Sr. said. “You can’t prepare for that. You can prepare for another driver doing something, but a plane? That’s unbelievable.”
The Investigation: How Did This Happen?
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has officially reclassified the incident from an “occurrence” to an “accident” due to the extensive structural damage sustained by the Boeing 767. NTSB investigators have already arrived on the scene to download data from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders and interview the flight crew.
In the meantime, United Airlines has placed the pilots on administrative leave—a standard procedure during ongoing investigations. Over the next month, the NTSB’s preliminary inquiry will dissect multiple factors, including flight operations, aircraft performance metrics, air traffic control communications, and potential pilot fatigue after the long-haul flight from Italy.
Perhaps the most baffling element of the incident is that the collision went completely unnoticed by both the flight crew and air traffic controllers in real-time. Audio recordings reveal that Flight 169 was cleared to taxi to its gate as normal. It wasn’t until 30 minutes later that an ATC controller radioed an airport operations vehicle, noting there was a substantial “hole in the side of the airplane.”
Newark’s Most Challenging Runway
Safety experts are pointing directly to the unique and unforgiving geometry of Newark’s Runway 29. Steve Arroyo, a former United pilot who has landed on the runway numerous times, called the approach “one of the most challenging in the world. ”Measuring just 6,726 feet, Runway 29 is Newark’s shortest runway and is typically reserved only when severe crosswinds make longer routes unviable.
Compounding the difficulty, the runway threshold starts less than 400 feet from the heavily trafficked NJ Turnpike.Because the runway is so short, the margin of error for incoming aircraft is practically nonexistent. When strong wind gusts hit 31 mph on Sunday, the pilots had to contend with a tight threshold while stabilizing a massive aircraft. Investigators will heavily scrutinize how the crew programmed their flight control systems and whether weather anomalies forced the aircraft dangerously low.
A History of Near Misses
While planes regularly buzz low over the New Jersey Turnpike—often startling out-of-state drivers—this is the first recorded instance of an aircraft making physical contact with a vehicle on the highway.The industry is breathing a collective sigh of relief that this incident didn’t mirror the tragedy of 1985, when Delta Flight 191 encountered a microburst and crashed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, striking a highway vehicle and resulting in 137 fatalities.
By contrast, Sunday’s event at Newark is being viewed as a near-miracle. United Airlines maintenance teams are currently conducting a rigorous safety investigation, but for the 231 people on board and the drivers on I-95, it was an incredibly close escape from catastrophe.
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