ORIGINAL HEADLINE · Newsmax · 2026-05-03 — “United Jet Strikes Light Pole While Landing At Newark” · read source
NEWARK — The dame was a Boeing 767. She had been flying since Reagan’s second term, and she had logged enough miles to spell her own name in the cumulus. Sunday at two PM eastern, she came in low over the New Jersey Turnpike on her final approach to Newark Liberty. She came in heavy, the way they all come in when they have been over open water for nine hours. And she came in unaware, friends, of the light pole that the cartographers, in their wisdom, had not put on her chart.
United Airlines Flight 169, fresh in from Venice. The pole, which had not done a thing to anybody, was on the Turnpike, doing what poles do. The dame clipped it. She did not stop. She did not call. She taxied to the gate. The crew got off and went to the bar. (I do not know that part for certain. I am projecting.)
United, which had been the dame’s chaperone for the duration, issued the following: that flight 169 had “come into contact with a light pole” on its final approach. That is, friends, what a guy says when he is being polite. Mine is “hit.” Mine is “struck.” Mine is the kind of phrasing a guy uses when he is being honest with himself in an empty office at four in the morning, with a cup of coffee that wasn’t.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating. The investigation will, per the company, be “rigorous.” That is two scare quotes in one statement, which, by my count, is one more than the FAA generally allows in a public release. The crew has been “removed from service.” Three.
The plane landed safely. Taxied to the gate normally. No passengers were injured. No crew were injured. The pole, however — the pole, friends, took the hit. The pole was unavailable for comment. The pole has, as far as I can determine, no insurance.
Newark is the kind of airport where this happens. Newark is the kind of airport where the Turnpike is in the airport, and the airport is in the Turnpike, and a guy who works there can leave his shift, walk three blocks, and be on the same road that just got hit by a 767. There is a metaphor in there somewhere. I am not paid to find it. I am paid to file the story. He pays me very poorly to file the story.
I lit the cigarette I keep behind my ear. I never smoke it. The fan turned twice. The dame, somewhere in the hangar, is being looked at by a man with a clipboard. The clipboard has a clip. The clip has not, to my knowledge, struck a light pole. Yet.
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