Air Canada regional flight 8646 operated by Jazz Aviation from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night, plowed into an airport fire truck that crossed the runway just ahead of the landing airplane. Pilots Antoine Forest, and MacKinzie Gunther, both of Canada were killed. Scores of passengers on the Bombardier CRJ-900 were injured along with the occupants of the fire truck.
Antoine Forest, pilot with Jazz Aviation
Video posted to Instagram by Simon Hradecky, publisher of the Aviation Herald, shows the moment of the collision.
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The fire truck was operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It was on the airfield responding to the crew of a United flight worried about a odor on the airplane. A recording from ATCLive.com the air traffic controller can be heard issuing the clearance allowing the truck to cross the runway. Then, seconds later, he countermands it.
With increasing urgency the controller says, “”Stop, stop, stop. Truck 1, stop. Truck 1, stop,” followed by the sound of alarms going off in the control tower. This part of the exchange lasted just six seconds. There was no indication the fire truck crew heard the order to stop moving.
Photos of the airplane, show its nose sheared off, directly behind the side cockpit window on the left side. The front entry door remains intact. On the right side, the damage appears to go further back. This is where flight attendant, Solange Tremblay was seated in the rear facing jump seat just behind the cockpit. Still strapped into her seat, the impact propelled her through the fuselage and out onto the runway.
Her daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Canada’s National Post her mother had suffered a broken leg.
“It’s a miracle she’s alive,” Lépine told the paper.
The accident puts the United States’ troubled air traffic control system back in the spotlight. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy arrived in New York and swiftly called on federal lawmakers to approve more spending to beef up both the number of controllers and the technology with which they work.
The role of the controller and what factors led the one in LaGuardia’s tower to believe the fire truck could safely pass across Runway 4 will certainly be part of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation. It is getting a slow start due to an accumulation of factors.
Long wait times at airports around the country due to the suspension of pay for TSA agents and an already busy week for travel made it difficult even for NTSB investigators to get to New York. Then there is the matter of the plane and fire truck wreckage littering the airfield which kept the entire airport closed adding to the other travel disruption.
But it could not be helped, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. The debris is copious and much of it could be hazardous.
“I just want to express how much, there is a lot of debris we need to go through, all of that and figure out what we need to take back to our labs” Homendy said when asked how long it would be before the airport could be reopened. It could be days she warned. But on this, travelers would be relieved to learn she was wrong and LaGuardia reopened Monday afternoon.
You’re letting these firemen who were driving the truck off the hook too easy. Anyone that has worked at an airport line operation (and I have) are trained to pay attention to EVERYTHING!
These fireman even tho cleared to cross an active runway are supposed to LOOK! These fireman solely work at the airport – it’s not their first rodeo. So yes, an ATC ground controller who has to multitask and pay attention to several things made a mistake, those fireman had ONE job…. Drive the truck across an active runway and look both ways. Something we all are taught in kindergarten.
Chris brings up a good point. The aircraft would have had its landing lights on and you would think it would be very visible with a simple glance up and down the runway? One possible scenario…..it looks like the taxiway intersects the runway at an angle, perhaps that angle hid the drivers view of the airplane that was 6 seconds away and that combined with a mindset that since he is cleared to cross the runway it must be , in his mind anyway, clear, creating the perspective it was ok to cross. Bottom line is though, he wasn’t sufficiently vigilant.