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New York’s LaGuardia Airport shut down after an Air Canada jet collided at high speed with a fire truck late Sunday, killing the pilots and injuring a flight attendant who was later found outside the aircraft, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation and airport officials’ remarks. Investigators said the probe is continuing as they look for what happened during the collision, including whether airport air traffic and ground traffic coordinated correctly.
In accounts from passengers on the regional jet from Montreal, the escape unfolded quickly after the impact. Moments after the crash, passengers took their escape “into their own hands,” tearing open emergency exit doors and jumping off the plane’s wings, with some reporting injuries such as bleeding or head wounds as they helped others coming behind them.
Passenger Clément Lelièvre said he was not “scared or panicked,” describing instead that he believed many aboard were aware “of what happened,” and that “so we all went outside; we got other people out.” He credited the pilots’ “incredible reflexes” with helping save lives, saying the pilots braked extremely hard just as the plane touched down.
Air Canada said 72 passengers and four crew members were aboard the Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, and that the flight originated at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. The company also said two people from the fire truck were taken to hospitals, along with about 40 passengers and crew members from the aircraft, with some suffering serious injuries and others released by Monday morning or walking away without needing treatment.
Officials said the flight attendant survived. The incident, authorities said, also occurred amid a wider disruption environment at U.S. airports, with LaGuardia among hubs forced to contend with longer delays linked to a partial government shutdown that had affected other airport functions, even as air traffic controllers continued to operate.
Investigators and officials described details about the moments leading up to the collision. The crash came after the fire truck was given permission to check on another plane that had aborted its takeoff after reporting an odor on board and then started crossing the tarmac, and an air traffic controller could be heard on airport communications frantically telling the fire truck to stop.
During the investigation, investigators said they will examine the coordination between airport air traffic and ground traffic at the time of the crash. Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector general, said that coordination will be a key focus, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said LaGuardia is “well-staffed” but faces a shortage of controllers.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Monday news conference that the runway where the crash happened is likely to be closed for “days” during the investigation as investigators sift through debris. Homendy also said authorities recovered the plane’s cockpit and flight data recorders by cutting a hole in the aircraft’s roof and then drove them to the NTSB lab in Washington for analysis.
By Monday afternoon, flights resumed on one runway with lengthy delays, officials said. Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said the pilots who died in the first fatal LaGuardia crash in 34 years were both based out of Canada, and Jeannette Gagnier, the great aunt of one of the pilots, identified him as Antoine Forest.
The FAA and airport monitoring systems also entered officials’ and aviation specialists’ remarks. LaGuardia has an advanced surface surveillance system designed to track planes and vehicles crossing the airport, and a former FAA air traffic control chief, Mike McCormick, said an alarm heard in the background of audio was likely from the system and would have alerted the tower to a potential collision. McCormick also noted FAA statistics showing 1,636 runway incursions last year, and officials said air traffic controllers are not impacted by the partial government shutdown in the way that airport security lines had been.