Deadly LaGuardia runway collision: What we know so far | CBC News

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. An air traffic controller said "stop" at least 10 times. But as investigators piece together the ensuing collision at New York's LaGuardia airport that killed two Air Canada pilots and injured dozens of passengers, experts say what might be more critical is what is missing from the air traffic audio recordings. "We seem to have three people that needed to know what's going on, or actually four different entities, and we don't hear any co-ordination among them," Mary Schiavo, the former U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general, told CBC News Network Monday morning. "There are three people communicating but not with each other." Air ⁠Canada Express Flight 8646, a CRJ-900 ⁠operated by Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal to New York when it struck a fire truck on the runway at LaGuardia airport in Queen's, N.Y. The impact crushed the jet's nose, leaving cables and debris dangling from the mangled cockpit. Images from the crash site showed the damaged fire truck flipped onto its side. The pilot and copilot were killed. About 40 passengers and crew members were taken to area hospitals, some with serious injuries. Most have since been released from treatment, authorities said Monday. Here's what we know about what happened. Air Canada flight 8646 left Montreal at 10:12 p.m. carrying 72 passengers and four crew members. It had been scheduled to depart at 8 p.m., but the Montreal airport website shows passengers didn't board until 9:25 p.m. The Air Canada Express flight was operated by Jazz Aviation. Jazz, the country's largest regional carrier, is not owned by Air Canada but by a holding company called Chorus. The non-stop Sunday flight, scheduled to leave at 8 p.m., typically takes one hour and 30 minutes, according to the Air Canada website. Around the same time the Air Canada flight was due to land, radio chatter from LiveATC.net indicates a United Airlines flight at LaGuardia had reported a strange odour on board, prompting an emergency response by the airport's rescue and firefighting team. According to CBS News, the pilots of United Airlines Flight 2384 aborted their takeoff when an anti-ice warning light came on, then reported an odour in the cabin and requested assistance from firefighters. "The pilots said flight attendants were feeling ill and declared an emergency when no gates were immediately available," CBS reports. A fire truck was cleared to cross Runway 4, where Air Canada Flight 8646 was about to land. When a plane is given clearance to land, it has right of way on that runway, Schiavo told CBC News Network. The tower, known as local control, cleared the plane to land, she said. Ground controllers oversee activity on the ground, including taxiing aircraft and emergency vehicles. "We hear clearly the communication that put the fire truck on a runway, when by federal aviation regulation, that aircraft owned the runway," Schiavo said. "But what we don't hear is were the ground controllers co-ordinating with the tower. And of course there was no way, apparently, that the aircraft could have heard that they just cleared a fire truck across the runway they're coming in to land on." The flight landed at approximately 11:37 p.m., according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24. An air traffic controller was heard urgently telling the fire truck to stop and not cross the runway, using the word "stop" at least ten times. "Stop there, please. Stop, stop, stop. Truck 1, stop. Truck 1, stop. Stop Truck 1, stop," the controller said, his voice getting more and more urgent. The aircraft hit the fire vehicle while travelling about 39 km/h, according to Flightradar24, which last recorded data for the flight at 11:37 p.m. ET on Sunday. The last recorded location was logged about 22 seconds after touchdown. Alarms and sirens can then be heard as the air traffic controller tells another incoming flight to "go around." The nose of the aircraft was sheared off by the collision, killing both pilots. NBC News in New York reported that a flight attendant was found outside the Air Canada CRJ-900 after the crash, citing sources who said she was still strapped into her jump seat when responders arrived. Jack Cabot, a passenger of Air Canada Flight 8646, told Reuters the landing initially felt routine, but the aircraft came in "pretty hard." "We immediately hit something and it was just chaos in there. About five seconds later, we had come to a stop, but in that short period, I mean, everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming pretty quickly," he said. We didn't have any directions because the pilot's cabin had been kind of destroyed, so somebody said, 'Let's get the emergency exit and get the door and let's all jump out,' and that's exactly what we did." The sources who spoke to NBC said the engines appeared to be off when responders arrived, allowing them to open the rear exit. Denis Lepage, a retired Air Canada pilot, is familiar with the route, having flown between Montreal's Trudeau Airport and New York's LaGuardia Airport for 29 years. "LaGuardia is an extremely busy airport, both in terms of air traffic and ground traffic. So there are a lot of vehicles on the move," he said on Radio-Canada's Tout Un Matin. "Air traffic controllers must be extremely vigilant when issuing clearances." LaGuardia was the 19th-busiest U.S. airport in 2024, with more than 16.7 million passengers boarding flights there, according to a 2025 FAA database. LaGuardia is one of 35 major U.S. airports equipped with an advanced surface surveillance system that uses radar and locator data from aircraft to alert controllers to potential runway conflicts, according to the FAA. "There are a lot of questions now regarding the communications," U.S. safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told Reuters. "Communication is going to be a major part of this investigation."