1 of 4 | LaGuardia Airport opened Monday afternoon after an Air Canada plane collided with a truck on a runway Sunday night, killing the aircraft’s two pilots and injuring dozens more. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
New York City’s LaGuardia Airport reopened Monday afternoon as federal investigators probe the cause of late Sunday’s fatal crash between an Air Canada flight and a fire truck on Runway 4.
The Bombardier CRJ-900 had landed on the runway and collided at high speed with the fire truck as it was crossing the tarmac at around 11:37 p.m. EST Sunday. The aircraft’s pilot and co-pilot were killed in the crash, while 43 people, including the fire truck’s two occupants, were transported to the hospital, where some remained Monday night.
After the crash of the Jazz Aviation flight operated on behalf of Air Canada, federal authorities issued a ground stop and the airport was closed until 2 p.m. Monday when operations resumed at the airport, according to LaGuardia Airport. The first plane departed LaGuardia at 2:08 p.m., according to air traffic monitoring website Flightradar24.
Federal investigators were arriving at the site to begin their investigation into the cause of the crash on Monday, but not all had arrived by 6 p.m. when Jennifer Homedy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters during a press conference that the probe will take time.
Runway 4, she said, will be closed for days as they photograph evidence and sift through debris that litters the area to understand what needs to be collected and returned to their labs in Washington, D.C.
“There is a tremendous, tremendous amount of debris from the taxiway Delta, across Runway 4 and some other areas,” she said. “It’s pretty expansive.”
The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, known colloquially as black boxes, have been retrieved from the aircraft, and a NTSB employee had driven them back to Washington where the voice recorder was verified as undamaged, she said.
With the tail of the aircraft down and its nose high in the air, Port Authority and emergency responders had to cut a hole into the jet’s roof so they could drop into the cockpit and retrieve the devices, she added.
Work on the flight data recorder will begin tomorrow when she said she hopes to have
“We have a lot of data right now, a lot of information, including information on tower staffing, but the NTSB deals in facts. We don’t speculate,” she said. “We don’t take one person at their word. We verify that information carefully before we provide it.”
She added that the ongoing partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security and its Transportation Security Administration has impacted their investigation, stating an air traffic control specialist was in line with TSA for three hours.
“We had to call Houston to beg to see if we can get her through,” she said. “So, it’s been a really, a really big challenge to get the entire team here.”
Homedy spoke hours after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference at the airport alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other federal officials.
Duffy addressed concerns surrounding whether there was only one traffic controller working when the crash occurred, calling it a “rumor.”
“That’s not accurate,” he said. “We are committed to safety. We are committed to working together to make sure when you fly, you get to your destination.”
He said LaGuardia “is very well-staffed.” It has 33 of its 37 air traffic controller positions filled, with seven more people currently being trained.
Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, explained that the fire truck involved in the crash had been responding to the aborted takeoff of a United Airlines flight when it crossed Runway 4 on which the Air Canada flight had landed.
“We are committed to a full, transparent investigation,” he said. “And, again, we look forward to take concrete actions to ensure something like this will never happen again.”
Concerning the condition of the two occupants of the fire truck, Kathryn Garcia, head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said one was expected to be released Monday afternoon while the other would remain hospitalized overnight for observation.
“This could have been an even broader tragedy if everyone had not responded as quickly and effectively as they did,” she said.
The Air Canada collision is the first fatal incident at LaGuardia since 27 people were killed 34 years ago to the day when a plane crashed on takeoff during a snowstorm.
