jim dolan of our new york station reports. >> hopefully this is a little bit of a wake-up call before somebody's killed. >> reporter: it certainly woke up a lot of people on a small commuter plane coming from boston, as the wing of the world's largest commuter plane rams the smaller plane and spins it around with the impact. >> roll the emergency trucks. we've been hit by airfrance. >> and who was that? >> comair 553. >> comair 553. okay. we are calling them. >> reporter: so, what happened? what led to this kind of damage? and so many passengers shaken and stirred in their seat as they approached the terminal? well, among other things, the a-380, with a wingspan nearly the length of a football field, isn't designed to be on jfk's narrow taxiways. it took a waiver from the faa to allow it. >> the aircraft may not have been pulled in far enough, that if it was anything other than the world's largest aircraft taxiing behind him, it might have been okay. >> reporter: the smaller airplane stopped short of a pickup tru and the a-380 couldn't stop that fast. the ntsb is working to gather as