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The National Transportation Safety Board has published its preliminary report on last month’s deadly crash involving an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport, concluding communication failures and a lack of transponders in the truck played roles in the collision.
The report released Thursday said the truck’s driver heard instructions to “stop, stop, stop” over the radio, but did not realize the message was intended for them.
The fire truck’s turret operator then heard the controller say, “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” and realized the warning was for their vehicle. By then, the report said, the truck was already on Runway 4 as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was landing.
Pilots Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest were killed when the jet and the truck collided seconds after the plane touched down. More than 30 people were hurt, including six who had serious injuries.
Captain Antoine Forest, one of two pilots who died when their airliner collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York City in March, was remembered at a visitation in his hometown of Coteau-du-Lac, Que., on Friday.
The NTSB’s preliminary report on Thursday summarizes interviews with the firefighters and other personnel, providing its most complete set of findings on the collision to date. The document did not include formal recommendations, as the final report is not yet complete.
Greg Feith, a former NTSB air safety investigator, said he could understand why the firefighter might have been momentarily confused by the initial, “de-identified” command to “stop, stop, stop.”
“Of course, that raises the question: ‘Is that for me? Is that for us? Who was he talking to, a truck or an airplane?’ That, I think, still needs some clarification,” Feith told CBC News. “Words have meaning and you have to be very specific and very commanding [as an air traffic controller].”
Emergency vehicles didn’t have transponders for automatic alerts
Another factor in the crash was the fact that emergency vehicles at LaGuardia were not outfitted with a transponder as part of the airport’s surface surveillance system, known as ASDE-X. The system is designed to prevent runway collisions by tracking the movement of every plane and vehicle in real time on a display air traffic controllers can see.
The system provides a visual and audible alert when it detects a potential collision, giving controllers the time to intervene, but neither alarm went off at LaGuardia the night of the crash.
None of the seven emergency vehicles in the area were outfitted with transponders, the NTSB’s report said. They were detected as radar targets, but the ASDE-X system couldn’t get a reliable read on their positions to potentially predict a collision course because the vehicles were merging too close together.
“As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1 (or any of the other vehicles in the group) and did not predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane,” the NTSB report read.
The Federal Aviation Administration recommended airports with ASDE-X systems voluntarily outfit their emergency vehicles with transponders to improve airfield safety last May. Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has been vocal for more than 15 years about the collision risk caused by runway incursions, classified as the incorrect presence of a vehicle, person or aircraft on a surface designated for takeoff or landing.
La Guardia was also equipped with red runway status lights, which illuminate to warn pilots when a runway isn’t clear to use. The NTSB’s preliminary report said the lights were on when the Air Canada plane landed and stayed on “until about the time Truck 1 reached the (near) edge of runway, when they extinguished, about 3 seconds prior to the collision.”
According to air traffic control transmissions, Flight 8646 had been cleared to land on Runway 4 at 11:35 p.m. ET. The fire crew asked to cross the same runway about two minutes later — 25 seconds before the crash.
The radio warnings, which have been available online since the collision, capture an air traffic controller saying “stop” at least 10 times to try and tell the fire truck not to cross the runway.
After the crash sheared off the nose of the plane, the controller could be heard saying, “I messed up.”
Tower staffing was ‘consistent’ with normal practice, findings say
There were two qualified controllers with a combined 37 years of experience in the tower at the time, which the NTSB said was “consistent” with scheduling practices. One employee was a local controller, who manages active runways and the immediate airspace surrounding the airport, and the other was the controller in charge, who was responsible for the safety of all operations.
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy acknowledged last month that staffing had been a concern for the air traffic control team for years, especially against a heavy workload. She said staffing decisions would be part of the investigation.
The FAA has long faced a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers, with staff routinely working overtime and six-day weeks. In its report, the NTSB said the controllers in the tower on the night of the collision were both less than an hour into their shifts.
