NTSB report describes chaos at LaGuardia Airport ahead of deadly Air Canada crash – Gothamist
A worker in the Port Authority truck that sparked last month’s deadly crash with an Air Canada plane at LaGuardia Airport told investigators he heard a controller repeatedly call out “stop” before the collision.
But due to a flurry of communication meltdowns, he didn’t know the order was directed at his vehicle, according to a report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The report lays out how seven different emergency vehicles were operating on the airport’s runways around 11:30 p.m. on March 22 to respond to a plane that reported smoke in its cabin. It stated that none of the vehicles had transponders typically used to precisely monitor the locations of vehicles at airports, and “simultaneous radio transmission on the same frequency obscured” all the drivers’ communication.
The NTSB said the truck was caught in that chaos as an Air Canada jet was descending into LaGuardia.
Due to the communication problems, the airport’s systems weren’t able to “predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane,” according to the report.
Courtesy NTSB
An audio recording from the airport’s control tower shows a controller initially telling a truck to pass the runway right as the Air Canada plane landed. The recording shows the controller quickly changed his mind, and yelled out, “Stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck One, stop, stop, stop.”
But the truck was already on the runway rolling at roughly 24 mph when it crashed into the oncoming plane, according to the NTSB report. The crash killed the plane’s two pilots. The report said the crash injured another 39 people, six of them seriously.
The passenger of the truck said “he did not know who that transmission was intended for” because of the obscured frequency on the radio transmission.
The report released Thursday is preliminary and the NTSB said it will release its full findings up to two years after the collision.
Courtesy NTSB
Before the report was released, the head of the Port Authority — which oversees LaGuardia Airport — said it was waiting to follow safety recommendations from the NTSB.
“ We are constantly looking at our safety program and our training program, and we will incorporate whatever NTSB has recommendations in as we move forward to make sure that we are keeping the public as safe as possible,” Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said at a news conference at the agency’s monthly board meeting. “[But] we have not made any equipment changes at this time.”
Garcia continued, “In almost every case, there are multiple points of failure.”
Two controllers were staffing the air traffic control tower during the crash, which the NTSB report said was “consistent with the mid-shift basic watch schedule.”
