Two United Airlines aircraft collide at New Jersey airport amid spate of near ... trends now

Two United Airlines planes clipped wings on the tarmac at Newark Liberty International amid a spate of high-profile near misses at U.S. airports.

A Boeing 757 bound for Orlando, Florida, was struck by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner before the pilot announced to passengers: 'Obviously, our wing has been clipped.'

The Federal Aviation Authority is investigating the incident, which happened last Friday morning. It came before a near-catastrophic incident in Austin on Saturday when a FedEx cargo flight came within less than 100ft of colliding with a Southwest Airlines passenger jet.

Another terrifying near miss at JFK in January has also fueled concerns about an 'alarming' increase in such incidents at airports in the U.S.

During the Newark incident, Flight 2135 to Orlando was parked at its gate when the larger plane, which had recently arrived from Johannesburg in South Africa, struck the wing.

The Orlando-bound aircraft had just returned to the gate because of a maintenance issue, passenger Rebecca Blum said.

She said she felt a 'jolt [then] looked outside and saw as clear as day the wing of a larger plane had clipped our wing. Definitely heard it. Felt it mildly I would say, but more the noise. I think we were thinking, what was that?'

Passengers were able to disembark safely before another plane was arranged a couple of hours later, at around 11.40am.

The FAA said: 'The United Flight 2135 was struck by a Boeing 787, a Dreamliner, that arrived from Johannesburg, South Africa earlier in the morning. The much larger plane was being relocated by a tug when it made contact with the smaller Boeing 757, parked at the gate.'

Photos of the damage show the tip of the wing on one aircraft was torn off by

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