Moments after an Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck at high speed while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, passengers took escape into their own hands. With fuel in the air and wreckage where the cockpit had been, people tore open emergency exit doors, hopped onto the plane’s wings and helped pull others out — some bleeding or with head wounds.
“I wasn’t scared or panicked. On the contrary, I think most of us were pretty aware of what happened,” passenger Clement Lelievre said. “So we all went outside; we got other people out.” Lelievre credited the pilots’ “incredible reflexes” with saving lives, saying they braked extremely hard just as the plane touched down.
About 40 passengers and crew members from the Montreal-originating flight, and two people from the fire truck, were taken to hospitals. Some suffered serious injuries; by Monday most had been released, and others walked away without treatment. The flight attendant who was thrown from the aircraft was found injured but alive outside the plane.
The collision occurred after a fire truck was cleared to check on another aircraft that had aborted takeoff after reporting an odor on board and began crossing the tarmac. Air traffic control audio captures a controller frantically telling the fire truck to stop. Roughly 20 minutes later, the controller can be heard saying, “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
Investigators are focusing on coordination between air traffic and ground vehicles at the time of the crash, said Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector general. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the runway where the crash happened is likely to remain closed for days while investigators sift through debris. The NTSB recovered the plane’s cockpit and flight data recorders by cutting a hole in the aircraft’s roof and transporting them to the agency’s lab in Washington for analysis. Homendy said it was too early to answer many questions, but more information was expected.
The crash temporarily shut down LaGuardia — the New York region’s third-busiest hub — during a period already affected by a partial U.S. government shutdown. Flights resumed Monday afternoon on one runway, though lengthy delays continued. The shutdown has caused disruptions at other airports as well, notably at Delta, which has a major presence at LaGuardia.
There were 72 passengers and four crew aboard the Jazz Aviation flight operating for Air Canada, the airline said. Canada has sent a team of investigators. The pilot and copilot, who were both based in Canada, died; relatives identified one pilot as Antoine Forest. Jeannette Gagnier, the great aunt of one of the pilots, said he had always wanted to be a pilot.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said LaGuardia is “well-staffed” but faces a shortage of controllers. Air traffic controllers are not furloughed during the partial government shutdown, though the FAA has long struggled with a chronic shortage of controllers.
LaGuardia is among 35 major U.S. airports equipped with an advanced surface surveillance system to track aircraft and vehicles on the ground. An alarm heard in air traffic control audio was likely from that system and would have alerted the tower to the potential collision, former FAA air traffic control chief Mike McCormick said. FAA statistics show there were 1,636 runway incursions last year.
