Two pilots killed after Air Canada jet collision at LaGuardia in New York
www.theguardian.com
NTSB says investigation under way as nine people remain hospitalized after plane hit fire tuck on runway

Nine people hospitalised and airport closed after landing plane hits fire truck responding to separate incident

The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport, in an incident that closed the airport.

The collision also caused serious injuries with nine people in hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane, operated by its partner Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal, based on a preliminary passenger list that remained subject to confirmation. Jazz is owned by Chorus Aviation.

  • egerlachEnglish
    461·
    2 days ago

    The controller was working both Tower and Ground frequencies at the time of the collision. At a busy airport like LaGuardia, that’s incredibly unsafe, IMO. Something grabbing his attention on Ground distracted him from this developing situation on his Tower responsibilities, and that’s all it took. He tried to then stop it, but it was too late.

    He’s going to live with what happened for the rest of his life. I feel deeply sad for him. It’s not even really his fault. He was put in a situation where any human is likely to fail sooner or later.

    The US’s air infrastructure (along with a lot of other infrastructure) has been going downhill since the Reagan administration. The US needs a 2-3x investment in the FAA 10 years or so ago.

    I haven’t travelled to the US since Feb 2020, and I’m not going to (even for work) for multiple reasons at this point: the continued deterioration of the FAA’s systems is one major one.