Deadly collision at LaGuardia: report blames air traffic control and equipment

In March, a collision between an Air Canada plane and a rescue vehicle resulted in the death of both pilots and multiple injuries.

Several human errors and equipment failures caused the collision between an airplane and a fire truck in March at New York-LaGuardia airport, as revealed by a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Thursday. The crash between the Jazz Aviation CRJ-900 operating for Air Canada and the rescue vehicle resulted in the deaths of both pilots and multiple injuries.

According to initial findings of the investigation, which confirm some details shared in the days following the March 22 accident, a key mistake was the air traffic controller allowing the truck operators to cross the runway while the plane was approaching. Realizing the error a few seconds later, the controller instructed the rescuers to stop by saying “stop stop stop.” However, one of the truck crew members initially reported not knowing “to whom this message was addressed,” as stated by the NTSB.

“He then heard ‘Truck 1, stop, stop, stop’ and understood that it was meant for them, realizing that they had entered the runway,” continued the report. “But it was too late to avoid the accident.”

The report also highlights the absence of a transponder on the rescue vehicle. Investigators stated that this would have automatically alerted the air traffic controller that the airplane and truck were on a potential collision path. “The system failed to correlate the airplane’s trajectory with that of the truck (…) and did not detect the collision risk with the aircraft during landing,” wrote the investigative bureau.

The accident occurred in the middle of the night in a busy operational setting, with multiple teams simultaneously responding to another emergency at the airport, causing partially garbled radio communications.

LaGuardia is the third airport serving New York, with 32.8 million passengers in 2025, according to data from the Port Authority.