Alarm failed to sound before crash, safety officials say

NEW YORK — A fire truck had been cleared to cross a runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport only 20 seconds before it collided with an Air Canada jet, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday of the fatal flight’s final moments.

Two pilots were killed in the collision with the truck on the runway Sunday night.

NTSB lead investigator Doug Brazy read out details from flight data and radio transmissions that traced the final three minutes of Flight AC8646 from Montreal to the busy New York airport, and offered a glimpse at possible staffing and technology issues that night.

Early details of the investigation revealed second-by-second decision-making inside the LaGuardia control tower as the Canadian pilots prepared to land.

Nine seconds before the crash the air traffic controller told the fire truck to stop. A second later, sounds reflect the plane touching down on the runway, Brazy said. Four seconds later, the tower once again called on the truck to stop.

Jennifer Homendy, head of the safety board, said a runway warning system didn’t sound an alarm before the collision. The system didn’t work as intended because the fire truck did not have a transponder, she told a news conference.

“We have no indication there were transponders on any of the trucks,” Homendy added. “But there are transponders on other trucks at other airports across the nation.”

The system would normally allow air traffic controllers to track the movement of aircraft and other vehicles on runways and taxiways, using radar, sensors and other technology that can trigger alarms.

“Air traffic controllers should know what’s before them, whether it’s on airport surface or in the airspace,” Homendy said. “They should have that information to ensure safety.”

Investigators are still parsing through information and plane debris, Homendy said, including conflicting accounts about how many controllers were in the tower at the time of the collision. They do know there were at least two people, she said, but it’s still not clear who held which duties.

It’s standard procedure for two controllers to have combined duties on the midnight shift at LaGuardia, Homendy said, but the safety board has repeatedly raised concerns during other investigations about the pressure put on employees during the late shift.

Homendy discouraged anyone from blaming the controllers, saying it “is a heavy workload environment.”

“We rarely, if ever, investigate a major accident where it was one failure. Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple, multiple layers of defence built in to prevent an accident,” she said.

“So when something goes wrong, that means many, many things went wrong.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is also taking part in the U.S.-led investigation.

“The hard work now of analyzing the factors that led to this tragic incident has begun and will continue until we get to the bottom of it,” Transport Minister Steve MacKinnon said in Ottawa.

The airplane was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members, Air Canada said Tuesday. Six people remained in hospital.

The pilots have been identified as Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther. Forest lived in Coteau-du-Lac, Que., southwest of Montreal, and Toronto college Seneca Polytechnic says Gunther graduated from its Honours Bachelor of Aviation Technology program in 2023.

“On behalf of everyone at Air Canada, I want to express my deep sympathies to everybody affected, and my deepest condolences to the family and friends of the two Jazz pilots who tragically lost their lives,” Air Canada President and CEO Michael Rousseau said in a statement.

LaGuardia airport reopened Monday but the runway where the collision occurred remained closed and many flights faced long delays. Lineups to get through security snaked through parts of the airport amid staffing shortages caused by a partial government shutdown that’s left agents with the Transportation Security Administration, who navigate travellers through security checkpoints, without pay.

Sunday’s crash has brought into focus the increasing pressures on air traffic controllers in the United States. The industry has been plagued by shortages of controllers, who have also worked without pay during previous government shutdowns.

Government records show that pilots have previously raised concerns about miscommunication and the increasing number of flights at LaGuardia.

In a report to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System — which collects confidential reports about the U.S. aviation industry — last summer a pilot noted “close calls” over the years amid the pace of operations building at the New York airport. The pilot wrote “the controllers are pushing the line.”

“Please do something.”

» The Canadian Press, with files from The Associated Press