Texas: Amid a spade of unusual incidents surrounding airplanes, a video has gone viral on social media showing an American Airlines plane getting pushed from its position by powerful winds on Tuesday at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport in the US State of Texas, as storms battered the region. The storms produced hail, rain and destructive winds as high as 95 miles per hour (153 km per hour) in Dallas-Fort Worth and surrounding areas.
According to New York Post, the plane was a Boeing 737-800 weighing 90,000 pounds (40,823 kg) which was shoved along the tarmac after it was disconnected from the loading bridge. American Airlines said the plane was one of "several" that were affected by the strong winds, prompting the airport to ground as many as 700 flights.
Fortunately, no one was on the plane and maintenance crews are “currently conducting thorough inspections for any required repairs. The same strong winds also crushed a large commercial warehouse near the airport, leaving its roof crumpled. More than 90 per cent of departures from the airport were delayed or cancelled on Tuesday as severe storms struck the state and its neighbouring areas.
"Severe weather, including straight-line wind gusts up to 80 mph, at our Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) hub affected several parked unoccupied aircraft. There were no injuries. Our maintenance team is currently conducting thorough inspections and will make any needed repairs." the airline said.
The viral video prompted divisive reactions on social media. "Don’t tell me it’s a Boeing aircraft again," a user commented. "*Boeing execs, nervously: Yeah, it was the weather. Not the plane. Definitely not the plane," wrote another netizen. One person wrote, "Yoh! Despite these scary aviation stories, we keep flying, what can we do?"
Meanwhile, north Texas is also dealing with widespread power outages in north Texas as a result of storms, where residents were also grappling with an oppressive heat wave. More than 300,000 customers in Dallas County alone lacked electricity as of Tuesday as the outages extended into rural east Texas.
Moreover, at least seven people were killed in Cooke County, Texas, from a tornado that tore through a mobile home park Saturday, officials said, and eight deaths were reported across Arkansas. At least 25 others were killed in Oklahoma, Missouri and Kentucky over the weekend.
(with inputs from Reuters)
