A collision between an Air Canada Express jet and a fire truck on a rain-slicked runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York City late Sunday night killed two pilots and injured over 40 people, prompting a frantic exchange between air traffic controllers and pilots, according to audio recordings released Monday.
The Air Canada Express CRJ-900, operated by Jazz Aviation, was arriving from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew members when it struck a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle shortly before 11:40 p.m., according to airport officials. The fire truck was responding to a separate incident involving a United Airlines flight that had reported an odor in the cabin, officials said.
Audio recordings captured the moments before and after the impact. An air traffic controller repeatedly ordered “Stop, stop, stop, Truck 1, stop, stop, stop!” as the truck was crossing Runway 4, the same runway the Air Canada jet was landing on. The controller then instructed an arriving Delta Air Lines plane to abort its landing and climb to a safe altitude.
“I see you collided with a vehicle there. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now,” the controller said immediately after the collision, according to the recordings. Moments later, an air traffic controller can be heard acknowledging the collision.
Approximately 20 minutes after the crash, a controller, seemingly the same one involved in the initial exchange, was heard discussing the airport’s closure with a Frontier Airlines pilot. “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up,” the controller said, according to audio obtained by the Associated Press.
Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stated at a news conference that 41 passengers and crew members were transported to hospitals, with 32 subsequently released. Others remain hospitalized with serious injuries. Two Port Authority officers inside the fire truck were similarly injured, but their injuries were not life-threatening.
Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC, identified the pilots as Antoine Forest from Quebec and MacKenzie Gunther. One flight attendant, Solange Tremblay, suffered multiple fractures to one leg and will require surgery, her daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Canadian news station TVA Nouvelles, describing her mother’s survival as “a total miracle.”
Passengers described a chaotic scene following the impact. Rebecca Liquori, a passenger on the Air Canada flight, said the plane hit turbulence during descent and then braked hard, followed by a loud boom. “Everybody just jolted out of their seats. People hit their heads. People were bleeding,” she told News12 Long Island. She and other passengers helped open an emergency exit and slide down a wing to escape.
Another passenger, Jack Cabot, described the confusion after the crash, stating that passengers were forced to evacuate due to the fact that the flight deck was destroyed and instructions were not forthcoming. “So somebody said, ‘let’s obtain the emergency exit and get the door and let’s all jump out,’ and that’s exactly what we did,” he told WABC-TV.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said LaGuardia was “well-staffed” with 33 certified controllers, but the agency aims to have 37. He declined to speculate on the cause of the accident, deferring to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation. Canada has also dispatched a team of investigators to assist.
The crash temporarily closed LaGuardia, the New York region’s third-busiest airport, causing significant delays. Flights resumed on Monday afternoon on one runway. The incident follows a series of fatal aviation disasters in the past year, including a midair collision near Washington D.C. And a UPS freighter crash.
The FAA has disclosed 97 runway incursions in January, according to data posted on its website.
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