Experts reveal chain of errors that led to deadly Air Canada crash at LaGuardia airport

Aviation specialists have pointed to a series of errors that may have contributed to the fatal crash involving an Air Canada flight at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night.

The aircraft, travelling from Montreal to New York, had initially landed without issue before it collided with a fire truck that was crossing the runway. The impact tragically resulted in the deaths of both pilots, while a flight attendant was thrown from her seat during the incident.

In the immediate aftermath, attention turned to air traffic control, particularly following the release of audio recordings from the control tower. In the recordings, a controller can be heard urgently shouting: “Stop Truck 1, stop, stop, stop!” Moments later, their focus shifts to another incoming aircraft, which they instruct to “go around runway”.

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The controller then addressed the affected flight, saying: “Jazz 646, I see you collided with vehicle here, just hold position. I know you can’t move. The vehicles are responding to you now.”

Other pilots in the vicinity also responded, with one asking whether the runway had been closed, while another remarked: “that wasn’t good to watch”. The controller later acknowledged the situation, stating: “Yeah, I know, I was here. I tried to reach out to them. I stopped and we were dealing with an emergency earlier and I messed up.” A fellow pilot replied: “No man, you did the best you could.”

Former US Department of Transportation inspector general Mary Schiavo has since offered insight into how such an incident could unfold. Speaking to the New York Post, she outlined the importance of coordination between different roles in the control tower.

“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.

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“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.”

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Harvey Sconick, a retired air traffic controller who spent more than 38 years with the FAA, suggested that operational pressures or late-night staffing arrangements could have played a role. “It’s possible that one person was directing both air and ground traffic late at night when the airport got less busy, or perhaps the controllers were working on different frequencies and unable to communicate,” she said.

Schiavo added that the situation likely involved multiple missed opportunities to prevent the collision: “Unless the fire truck driver fell asleep, he would have heard that there was an airplane landing on that runway. And when the controller cleared him to cross the runway. He would have said, ‘Hey, are you sure you want us to cross? You’ve got a guy landing.’”

More than 40 people were taken to hospital following the crash, though only nine remain under medical care at the time of writing. Officials have confirmed that the fire truck had been responding to a separate aircraft issue when it entered the runway.

Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia confirmed the fatalities, telling reporters: “Sadly, the two pilots are confirmed deceased.”

While investigations are ongoing, early analysis suggests the tragedy was not caused by a single factor, but rather a combination of communication gaps, timing issues and procedural breakdowns that aligned with devastating consequences.

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Featured image credit: SMG/Shutterstock