Pilots have long raised alarms about air traffic control missteps, miscommunication, and other hazards at LaGuardia Airport, according to a damning CNN review of government records for the past two years.
“Please do something,” a pilot wrote last summer in one of at least a dozen reports about LaGuardia to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, describing a close call when controllers failed to provide proper guidance amid multiple nearby aircraft.
“The pace of operations is building in LGA. The controllers are pushing the line,” the pilot added. “On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there,” referencing the January 2025 mid-air collision over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, which killed more than 60 people.
Sunday’s fatal crash at LaGuardia involved an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal colliding with an airport fire truck, killing both pilots, as reported by Open Jaw.
Audio recordings from the LGA control tower reveal a controller asked the fire truck to stop at least 10 times before the collision. The truck had been responding to a report of a strange odour on a United Airlines flight that had just landed.
Air traffic audio indicates the fire truck was initially cleared to cross the runway before the collision. "I messed up," a controller can be heard saying afterward.
CNN’s review suggests close calls are a major problem at US airports.
“Given the chronic understaffing of air traffic control facilities and previous government shutdowns, reports of near misses and concerns about safety are not uncommon about airspaces and runways around the country, other data from the safety reporting system shows,” CNN said.
The Toronto Star reports a 3,000-person shortage of air traffic controllers in the US. However, long-time flight safety analyst and former accident investigator David Soucie said it’s far from certain that the shortage played a role in the collision.
Soucie noted that the FAA recently began limiting flights at airports when there aren’t enough controllers on duty. “For the first time, the FAA’s actually said ‘If we don’t have enough controllers at an airport, we’re going to restrict flights,’” he said.
The US National Transportation Safety Board says it has recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane and the Port Authority fire truck.
Published reports have identified the pilots who died in the crash as Antoine Forest from Coteau-du-Lac, Que., and MacKenzie Gunther. The Federal Aviation Administration described the pilots as "two young men at the start of their careers."
A flight attendant was ejected from the plane in her seat and found outside the aircraft. She suffered a broken leg and other injuries but somehow survived a terrifying incident.
Delays Continue
The New York Times and other publications said delays are expected to continue for days at LGA as the runway where the plane collided with a fire truck remained closed.
Jennifer Homendy, Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a 23MAR news conference that there was a significant amount of debris on the runway that would need to be examined and documented, along with other evidence from the crash site. “It’s going to take some time,” she said.
As of 8 a.m. EST today (24MAR), FlightAware was showing nearly 200 cancelled flights and more than 150 delays at LGA.
