June 3, 2026.   The Lowdown.

You’ve all seen the video of that United 767 hitting the light pole as it landed in Newark back on May 3rd. The footage from inside the careening bread truck is startling.

How it happened, exactly, is still being investigated. But I’ve been asked to speculate, and so I will:

Runway 29 at Newark is short. Long enough, under most conditions, to accommodate a 767, but short enough to require extra concentration from the crew. The runway’s threshold is also unusually close to the highway, lessening the margin for error.

One way or another, flight 169 drifted below the glide path and impacted the utility standard at the edge of the highway.

It’s possible they were “ducking under,” as we call it. That is, intentionally sneaking just a touch below the normal angle — to take advantage of as much pavement as possible and avoid landing long.

This technique, while not unheard of, is usually discouraged, and in some cases prohibited by the airline. We always pull up the performance data prior to landing, which tells us how much runway is required. It accounts for wind, surface conditions, and so on. If you’ve crunched the numbers correctly, there shouldn’t be a need for improvising.

Even if they were ducking under, they still shouldn’t have hit the pole. Somehow they ended up lower than they intended.

Or, for whatever reasons, it was entirely inadvertent. Sometimes an approach gets unstable and you fall a bit low. This isn’t terribly uncommon. If you’re unable to correct in time, you’re supposed to break off the landing and go around.

There is no ILS approach to runway 29 — a system that sends out a vertical guidance signal, called a “glide slope,” that pilots follow to the runway. Instead they were flying what we call a “nonprecision” approach. These come in different flavors, and while they’re very routine, and still plenty precise, they’re more complicated. The descent path is handled differently, and slipping low is perhaps more likely than it would be with an ILS. And winds were quite gusty at the time, adding to the difficulty.

Were they ducking under? Did they sink too and neglect to go around? Did they even realize what was happening? Was there time?

I don’t know. Any of that is possible. Or something else.

These are just guesses, and I’m not implying that anyone was negligent or reckless. Eventually we’ll have more info.

I landed on runway 29 many times, but it was years ago when I flew regional turboprops. What’s short for a 767 isn’t so short for a 19-seater.

Meanwhile, Instagram is full of reels showing purported “close calls” at the edge of 29, insinuating that the runway is unsafe and that planes are routinely almost crashing. These scary-seeming videos are mostly just tricks of angle and perspective. And as I noted earlier, the runway’s threshold is close to the highway, meaning that jets on a perfectly normal glide path can appear “low” when in fact they’re right where they should be.

The aircraft involved in the incident was a 767-400, largest variant of the 767 family. United and Delta are the only two carriers in the world that fly these models. United inherited its -400s from Continental Airlines when it merged with that carrier in 2010.

The -400 was a bespoke collaboration between Delta and Boeing. Delta wanted a widebody to replace its aging L-1011s, for use mainly in high-density domestic markets. Speaking of short runways, the -400 was once a regular visitor at La Guardia.

The jet was later shifted onto international routes. Flight 169 was coming from Venice.

Related Story:

ODE TO THE 767

Photos courtesy of Mark Rubenstein.