The driver of a bakery truck felt certain he was about to lose his head—literally—moments before a United Airlines plane slammed into his vehicle on the New Jersey Turnpike. His father revealed the chilling details during a Tuesday news conference, painting a picture of sheer terror on the asphalt.
Warren Boardly Jr. was hauling goods for Baltimore's H&S Bakery when United Flight 169 swooped down during its final approach to Newark. The aircraft's landing gear scraped the top of his 18-wheeler, nearly turning a routine delivery into a death sentence.
"He said he seen a flash and it made him duck and put up his hands," his father, Warren Boardly Sr., recounted. That split-second instinct may have saved his life—but not without cost.
Dashcam footage captured the terrifying instant of impact. The video shows Boardly Jr. smashing his head against the truck's ceiling as the plane clipped his rig. His lawyer, J. Wyndal Gordon, confirmed the blow caused an acute head injury.
"He described fear, total fear that he wouldn’t walk away from it, he thought that he would be decapitated," Boardly Sr. said. That visceral dread hung in the air long after the plane touched down safely at Newark International.
Boardly Jr. is now recovering at home, but the scars run deeper than the surface. "He has a lot of pain, a lot of emotional distress that's just not gonna heal overnight," Gordon told reporters.
His father added a haunting perspective: "His mental and emotional status is... you know, it's coming. We have to get him looked at because that was a traumatic experience. I've never known anyone to walk away from something like that."
One detail makes the survival even more miraculous. "Had he been going one mile per hour faster, or one mile per hour slower, it would have more than likely killed him," Boardly Sr. said. Watching the video, he admitted, "shook me to my core."
The family isn't rushing to court yet. Gordon explained their focus is on uncovering the truth: "We expect that there's some negligence there because planes just don't drop out of the sky and they just don't ordinarily and routinely hit 18-wheelers."
Federal investigators are now on the case. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been secured, and a preliminary report is expected within 30 days. United Airlines confirmed the plane hit a light pole on approach but landed safely with no injuries to passengers or crew.
For the Boardly family, every day since the collision feels like borrowed time. "Today could have been a day where we are mourning his loss," the father said—a stark reminder that sometimes survival comes down to a single inch, a single second, a single wrong move avoided.
