An Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck at high speed while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, and passengers took emergency action to get out. With fuel in the air and wreckage where the cockpit had been, people opened emergency exits, climbed onto the wings and helped pull injured travelers from the plane.
“I wasn’t scared or panicked. On the contrary, I think most of us were pretty aware of what happened,” passenger Clement Lelievre said. He credited the pilots’ “incredible reflexes,” saying the crew braked extremely hard just as the aircraft touched down.
About 40 passengers and crew from the Montreal-originating flight, plus two people from the fire truck, were taken to hospitals; some sustained serious injuries. By Monday most had been released and others walked away without treatment. A 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 captured 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 control and ground vehicles at the time of the crash, former Department of Transportation inspector general Mary Schiavo said. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the runway where the crash happened is likely to remain closed for days while teams sort through debris. The NTSB removed the plane’s cockpit and recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders by cutting a hole in the aircraft’s roof and transporting the devices to the agency’s lab in Washington.
There were 72 passengers and four crew aboard the Jazz Aviation flight operating for Air Canada, the airline said. Both the pilot and copilot, who were 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. Canada has sent a team of investigators to assist.
The crash temporarily shut down LaGuardia — one of the New York region’s busiest airports — during a period already affected by a partial U.S. government shutdown. Flights resumed Monday afternoon on a single runway, but lengthy delays continued. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said LaGuardia is “well-staffed” but faces a shortage of controllers; air traffic controllers are not furloughed during the shutdown, though the FAA has long reported a chronic staffing shortfall.
LaGuardia is among major U.S. airports equipped with an advanced surface surveillance system to track aircraft and vehicles on the ground. Former FAA air traffic control chief Mike McCormick said an alarm heard on control audio was likely from that system and would have alerted the tower to the potential collision. FAA statistics show there were 1,636 runway incursions last year.
Investigators cautioned that it is too early to answer many questions as they continue to examine cockpit recordings, tower communications and ground-radar data. More information is expected as the NTSB completes its initial on-scene work.
