Copa Flight CM427 Clips the Nose of a UPS 767 While Taxiing at Miami

Copa Airlines flight CM427, a Boeing 737-800 that had just landed from Panama City, collided with UPS flight 358, a Boeing 767 freighter taxiing out for Bogota, while both were taxiing at Miami International Airport on Saturday night, November 14, 2026. The FAA said the wingtip of the Copa jet struck the nose of the UPS aircraft, and that controllers had told the UPS crew to give way.

Two people suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene. The 166 passengers and six crew on the Copa flight have left the aircraft, CNN reported, and UPS said its crew was safe.

What the FAA and the airport said

In a short statement on its accidents and incidents page, the FAA said the Copa flight was taxiing to the gate and the UPS flight was taxiing for departure to Bogota, Colombia. The agency put the time at around 9 p.m. local time and said it is investigating.

The FAA statement does not give flight numbers. CM427 and UPS 358 were named by Simple Flying, and Flightradar24 tracking data matches them: Copa’s HP-1826CMP landed at Miami as CM427 at about 9:01 p.m., and UPS 358 was scheduled out on N336UP, a 767-300, with no departure recorded.

Miami International’s communications director, Greg Chin, told CNN the contact happened at around 9:15 p.m. and that fire rescue crews treated the two injured people on site. The reports do not say whether they were passengers or crew, and neither was taken to a hospital, according to ABC News.

The airport said traffic was moved to other taxiways, so operations at Miami International Airport were not affected. Copa said it regrets the disruption to its passengers and will cooperate with investigators, and UPS said it is committed to working with authorities to determine what happened.

What the radio recorded

On the air traffic control audio quoted by CNN, the Copa pilot reports, “Somebody hit us.” A UPS pilot then says, “Yeah, we went too far, and then he, he clipped us with the wing.”

The Copa pilot also tells the controller, “It seems that we are missing the left wingtip.” Photos of the freighter showed a crumpled nose with a hole in its panels, CNN said; the companies’ statements do not describe the damage.

Simple Flying, which credits the audio to ATC.com, reports that the controller told UPS 358 it had been “supposed to give way.” It also reports a UPS pilot saying the crew had been running a checklist for a runway change, which can mean reprogramming the flight management computer while the aircraft rolls.

That account comes from the cockpit side of a radio exchange, not from an investigation. The FAA has not said why the UPS Boeing 767-300 did not give way.

Why a wingtip strike may not become an NTSB case

Taxiway collisions sit in an odd spot in US safety rules. The NTSB’s regulations count an event as an accident only if someone is killed or seriously injured, or an aircraft receives “substantial damage,” between boarding for a flight and the moment everyone gets off.

Both jets were inside that window: one had passengers aboard after landing, the other was taxiing for departure. But the same rule, 49 CFR 830.2, lists damage to wingtips, dented skin and small punctures among the things that are not substantial damage.

With only minor injuries reported, the Copa jet’s missing wingtip, on its own, would not make this an accident under the NTSB definition. The open question is the 767’s nose: whether that damage counts as substantial is a judgment for investigators once the aircraft has been inspected.

As of the morning of November 15, the NTSB had not announced an investigation on its newsroom account, and the FAA was the only agency saying it would investigate.

A busy month on Miami’s taxiways

It is not the first taxiway conflict at Miami this month. On November 5, Lufthansa flight LH463 had to brake its 747-8 to a stop when an American Airlines 787 turned into its path, an event in which the two jets did not touch.

The collision also came a day after the FAA’s nationwide ground stop, which halted departures from every US airport on November 13. Nothing published so far links the two events.

The FAA’s findings will decide where responsibility lies. Until then, the radio exchange and the agency’s own statement both point to the same instruction: the UPS crew had been told to give way to the Copa jet.