The fatal incident at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on March 22nd stemmed from a combination of communication failures and a lack of appropriate gear, according to an initial assessment by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
As detailed in the report released on Thursday, one of the most critical errors involved air traffic controllers granting clearance for a fire truck to cross the runway while an aircraft was on its final approach, as reported by AFP. This occurred shortly before midnight on March 22nd at LaGuardia when an Air Canada plane collided with an airport fire vehicle on the runway. Two Canadian pilots perished in the crash. Over forty individuals sustained injuries, including two members of the fire crew.
Reports surfaced previously that an air traffic controller recognized the mistake moments later and instructed the fire truck crew to “Stop, stop, stop.” However, the NTSB’s finding indicated that the fire truck driver initially failed to grasp which party the instruction was intended for. Subsequently, hearing “Truck number one, stop, stop, stop,” the driver realized the directive was aimed at their unit. By that juncture, however, the vehicle had already entered the active runway.
Another contributing element to the disaster was the absence of a transponder in the fire truck. The report states that a transponder would have automatically alerted air traffic controllers regarding the potential for the aircraft and the ground vehicle to be in close proximity. Due to the lack of this equipment, experts noted that “the system was unable to correlate the landing path with the vehicle’s movement trajectory and could not foresee a potential collision with the aircraft.” The extensive investigation by the NTSB remains ongoing and is anticipated to take up to a year to complete.
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