LaGuardia plane crash audio captures moments before fatal collision: ‘I messed up’
LaGuardia plane crash audio captures moments before fatal collision: ‘I messed up’
A stricken air-traffic controller who was on duty when a passenger jet plowed into a rescue truck at LaGuardia Airport admitted “I messed up” — moments after the deadly crash, according to heart-pounding audio released Monday.
The horrific, caught-on-video Sunday night collision killed the two pilots on Air Canada Flight 8646, injured 41 people and caused an hours-long airport closure, officials said – as experts contended the crash was entirely avoidable and likely caused by a miscommunication.
The plane, operating as a Jazz Aviation flight, had taken off from Montreal and was landing on LaGuardia’s Runway 4 at around 11:40 p.m., officials and audio revealed.
But an air-traffic controller also had given a Port Authority firefighting vehicle, Truck 1, permission to cross the runway at the same time to deal with an unrelated emergency – an apparent mistake that was tragically caught too late, as the tense recording posted on the site LiveATC.net showed.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop,” a controller frantically demanded, according to the audio. “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop. Stop, Truck 1. Stop.”
After the collision, a controller could be heard telling a Frontier Airlines flight crew that the runway would be closed and asked if they would return to the ramp.
“We got stuff in progress for that, man, that wasn’t good to watch,” the Frontier pilots said.
“Yeah, I tried to reach out to ‘em … And we were dealing with an emergency, and I messed up,” the controller replied.
“No, you did the best you could,” Frontier crews said, trying to reassure the air traffic controller.
National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration investigators were probing what caused the crash, which prompted the closure of LaGuardia Airport until Monday at 2 p.m. amid already nightmarish travel conditions from a federal funding crisis.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, during a news conference with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul, deferred to the NTSB when pressed on the flight’s cause and other details.
But officials, witnesses and records provided a picture of what unfolded before, during and after the runway crash.
The Jazz Aviation flight had taken off from Montreal-Trudeau Airport in Quebec at 10:12 p.m. – after a two-hour delay, according to FlightAware – en route to LaGuardia.
As the CRJ-900 jet approached the Queens airport at around 11:40 p.m., a Port Authority rescue vehicle was responding to a report of a mysterious odor on United Airlines flight 2384, officials said.
Port Authority officers in the truck requested and received clearance to cross Runway 4, only to quickly to be told “stop” by an air traffic controller, audio revealed.
But it was too late – the massive jet T-boned into the firefighting truck, obliterating the front of the aircraft.
Here’s what else was known:
- Two pilots were killed in the crash, with one being identified as Antoine Forest, the Toronto Star reported Monday. “These were two young men at the start of their careers so it’s an absolute tragedy,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said at a press conference.
- Port Authority officers Adrian Baez and MIchael Orscillo, who were in the truck, were injured and sent to the hospital. One officer was set to be released sometime Monday afternoon, while other will be kept in the hospital overnight, said Port Authority head Kathryn Garcia.
- Out of 72 passengers and four crew members, 41 people on the aircraft were injured. All but nine were released from the hospital by Monday afternoon.
- A flight attendant – identified as Solange Tremblay by TVA Nouvelles – was violently ejected from the plane while still strapped to her jumpseat, sources said. She suffered a broken leg, but miraculously survived, according to the report.
- The devastating crash could have been even worse if not for the “pure luck” that the jet hit the truck head-on and avoided damaging its fuel tanks, an aviation-safety analyst said.
- Mamdani credited first responders and passengers for their grace amid the chaos: “I also want to commend those who were thrust into a frightening accident and reacted not only with composure, but by extending a hand to the person next to them, passengers who opened the emergency door and helped one another off the plane, people who kept one another calm.”
Duffy and other officials were careful not to assign blame, citing the still-early investigation.
But several experts had no problem pointing fingers at air-traffic controllers, in large part based on the harrowing audio from the moments before and after the crash.
The plane “owned” the runway once it was cleared to land, said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the US Department of Transportation. She noted it sounded like only one person may have been directing both the tower and ground control.
“There are two parts here — there’s the control in the tower, also called local control, and there’s ground control. And those two air traffic control entities are supposed to coordinate with each other,” Schiavo explained.
“So, clearly they either did not coordinate, or they did and were just wrong. But giving a firetruck clearance to cross the runway after an aircraft has been cleared to run in this final is a clear error. There’s just no way around that,” she said.
“Who gave the final clearance for that fire truck across the runway? It should have been the tower, but clearly … someone made a very critical mistake in allowing a fire truck clearance to cross the runway when an aircraft had been given a landing clearance. That’s my take on it.”
Harvey Sconick, a retired air traffic controller who spent more than 38 years with the FAA, was even more blunt.
“The controller who crossed those vehicles while the airplane was landing just went brain-dead for a minute,” he told The Post.
“There’s no explanation I can give you that would make any sense why the controller would cross those vehicles, knowing that there’s a runway, that there’s an airplane flaring out to land.”
The audio reveals an air-traffic controller’s frenzied efforts to steer other planes away from the crash.
The controller ordered landing Delta Flight 2603, en route from Detroit to go around before turning back to the Jazz Aviation plane, the audio reveals.
“Jazz 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now,” the air traffic controller said.
Garcia acknowledged that air-traffic control is responsible for what unfolds on LaGuardia’s runways.
“The procedure is always in deference to the control tower, any time anyone is moving on any of our runways or taxiways,” she said.
Duffy shot down the suggestion that only one controller was in the tower.
“I’ve heard the rumor that there was only one controller in the tower, and that’s not accurate,” he said.
The crash unfolded 34 years to the day that USAir Flight 405 tumbled into Flushing Bay after taking off from LaGuardia, killing 27 of 51 people on board.
President Trump, a New Yorker, called the crash at LaGuardia Airport “terrible” Monday.
“They made a mistake,” Trump said.
His Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Mark Carney, expressed condolences for the victims and their families.
“The collision involving an Air Canada Express aircraft last night in New York that claimed the lives of the pilot and co-pilot, and injured dozens more, is deeply saddening,” Carney said in a statement.
“Canadian officials are working closely with their U.S. counterparts on the ground as the investigation continues.”
— Additional reporting by Anthony Blair, Larry Celona, Joe Marino and David Propper
