Virgin Atlantic flight: Flight from JFK Airport to London Heathrow cancelled after car crashes into plane's engine on runway

A Virgin Atlantic flight from New York’s JFK Airport to London Heathrow was cancelled after a car “rolled into” the plane’s engine. Breaking Aviation News and Videos posted on X, formerly Twitter, yesterday (April 15): “Virgin Atlantic A350-1000 damaged after catering service vehicle rolls into its engine at New York-JFK Airport.”

Later on in the day the platform posted on X that Virgin Atlantic had issued a statement, saying: "Today’s VS26 from New York JFK to London Heathrow has been cancelled following an incident at the gate at JFK involving the engine cowling of a stationary Virgin Atlantic aircraft and a catering service provider’s car that rolled into it. We can confirm that no customers were on board the aircraft during this time."

The airline reportedly opened an investigation into the incident and was looking into whether there had been any damage to the aircraft. The jet, registered as G-VDOT, parked at JFK's gate A terminal 4 on Sunday night (14 April) at 10.30pm local time after arriving from London.

The flight had been due to take off again to head back over the pond at 8.20am, landing in London at 8.10pm. The flight was subsequently cancelled and scheduled to take off at the same time on Tuesday (16 April).

A user initially posted the picture on the platform Reddit which gained a lot of attention as it showed a vehicle rammed into the plane’s engine on the runway. One user responded to the post saying: “You can’t park there mate”

Another user wrote: “I spent thirty years in aviation and have seen this multiple times. They aren't all texting related, people just zone out sometimes while driving and then BAM, they drive right into an aircraft.”