What we know about the LaGuardia Airport crash New York
What is known about the crash at LaGuardia Airport, 2 Fatalities, 41 persons admitted, 31 of them are released, others have severe injuries.
A jet strikes a fire vehicle, killing two pilots and closing a major New York airport.
Shortly after landing from Montreal on Sunday at around 23:40 local time (03:40 GMT), Air Canada flight AC8646 struck a fire truck on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport.
According to Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia, the truck had been dispatched to a different incident on board another jet that had “reported an issue with odour” just minutes earlier.
“We were literally like 100 meters away,” 23-year-old eyewitness Leo Medina told the BBC.
The audio from the LaGuardia air traffic control tower shows a staff member yelling, “Truck One, stop, stop, stop!” just before the collision. “It was like the plane got cut in half.”
Authorities “immediately responded” to the crash, according to Garcia.
To find out what transpired, an investigation is underway.
Garcia Remarks
According to Garcia, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will examine the aircraft’s speed, the number of people working in the air traffic control tower at the time, and whether or not anyone was ejected from the aircraft.
According to Kivanc Avrenli, a professor and specialist in commercial aviation safety at Syracuse University in New York, it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding staffing from the air traffic audio that has been made public alone because it “may sometimes be misleading”.
However, it suggests that “one controller may have been handling both ground and air traffic,” he wrote in an email to the BBC.
One controller handling both air and ground traffic is common, according to Margaret Wallace, a professor of aviation management at Florida Institute of Technology, because such roles are “understaffed”.
However, Avrenli stated that it is “far from ideal” for one person to do both in a complicated airport like LaGuardia.
He stated that among the concerns he expects investigators would address are whether there was sufficient staffing, what caused inconsistent approvals to be given, and whether there was a monitoring tool or alert system that may have avoided the crash.
0:32 “Stop, stop, stop”: During a crash, listen to the audio from the LaGuardia control tower
Who are the victims?
Four crew members and 72 passengers or Tourists were on board the CRJ 900 type aircraft and the two pilots who perished .
Garcia stated that the sergeant and police officer who were inside the firefighting vehicle were in a stable condition at the hospital “with no life-threatening injuries” and that all other passengers on the aircraft had been found.
“I visited them both in the hospital, as has the chairman, and they were able to speak and we’re notifying their families,” stated Garcia.
Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, claimed to have “been briefed on the tragic collision.”
“I am grateful to our first responders, whose swift actions saved lives,” he stated.
He stated that the National Transportation Safety Board “is investigating the incident, and the City is in close contact with federal, state, and local partners”.
The incident is described as “heartbreaking” by New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
She continued, “Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected.”
What impact will travel have?
Over 32 million passengers have flown through LaGuardia in the past year, making it one of the busiest airports in the United States.
After postponing almost 600 flights in and out, the airport only allowed aircraft to resume on one runway by Monday afternoon.
Among the airlines having problems at other airports was Delta, the biggest carrier at LaGuardia.
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