As wintry conditions continue to wreak havoc throughout the east, two airports have reported unrelated collisions between aircraft on the tarmac.
In Canada, the nation's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) is investigating after two planes collided on a runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Friday afternoon.
The incident occurred just after 6 p.m., when an empty Sunwing aircraft, which was being towed, collided with a WestJet plane that had just landed after arriving from Cancun, Mexico.
According to one passenger account, the tail of the Sunwing plane backed into the wing of the WestJet flight, causing a fire to break out, reported CTV.
Passenger Stephen Belford (@stephen_belford) posted a video of the fire on his Instagram account.
Passengers on board the WestJet flight were evacuated using the emergency exit slides. According to Reuters, a WestJet official said there were reports of "minor injuries" but that all 168 passengers and crew were safe and accounted for. One person from the Toronto Pearson ground crew, however, apparently sustained injuries and was hospitalized, according to CTV.
While injuries were minor, passengers were forced to evacuate onto the tarmac during brutally frigid conditions, as Toronto is being battered by the same weather system that has challenged air travel throughout much of eastern North America for the past two days.
A few hours later, shortly after midnight on Saturday morning, a similar collision occurred at New York's JFK International Airport, when the wing of a China Southern plane clipped the tail of a Kuwait Airways aircraft. Both planes sustained damage during the collision, according to NBC News.
The China Southern aircraft was being towed and carried no passengers during the time of the incident. The Kuwait plane was parked at the gate awaiting takeoff when it was struck by the other plane. Reportedly, none of the Kuwait passengers were injured, and all were ultimately transported to area hotels as they waited for information on their new flight.
The collision came at the tail end of a two-day period during with JFK was affected by major delays and cancellations as a result of Winter Storm Grayson. On Friday alone, JFK reported more than 350 flight cancelations, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.
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