LaGuardia plane crash: Runway reopens after mangled aircraft, truck removed

The deadly crash involving an aircraft and a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Monday was not the first time that a plane landing at LaGuardia struck a vehicle on the ground.

The incident has haunting echoes of a collision that occurred nearly 29 years ago to the day involving a much smaller aircraft.

On March 25, 1997, just after 5 a.m., a Grumman American G1159 "was substantially damaged when it collided with an unoccupied maintenance vehicle during the landing roll," according to the attached NTSB report reviewed by ABC News.

In the 1997 case, the 22-seat aircraft was arriving in Queens after a short flight from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Shortly before the plane landed, the vehicle on the ground, which had been assigned for lighting work at the airport, had mechanical issues.

Two electricians were in the broken-down truck at the time and reportedly noticed the lights of the plane approaching them. They quickly evacuated the truck, according to the report. Roughly two seconds later, the plane slammed into their vehicle.

The NTSB listed an issue with the tower controller as the probable cause of the incident. The board cited "the tower controller's inadequate service by clearing the airplane to land on the same runway, where he had previously cleared a maintenance vehicle to perform maintenance to the runway centerline lights."

No one was injured in the 1997 incident.

The pilot and copilot who died were both based out of Canada, said Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.

The airport remained closed until at least early Monday afternoon during the investigation, which is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board. Canada also sent a team of investigators.

President Donald Trump called it a "terrible" situation. "They made a mistake," he told reporters. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement the accident was "deeply saddening."

The fire truck was traveling across the runway to respond to a separate incident aboard a United Airlines flight, whose pilot had reported "an issue with odor," said Garcia.

Two Port Authority employees in the fire truck suffered injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, Garcia said.

There were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, according to the airline. The flight originated at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

Hours after the crash, the plane remained on the runway with its crumpled nose tilted upward.

The air traffic controller tried to warn the fire truck.

"Stop, stop, stop, Truck 1. Stop, stop, stop," the transmission says. "Stop, Truck 1." The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.

Air traffic controllers are not impacted by the partial government shutdown that has caused long delays at airport security checkpoints in recent days. They have been affected by past shutdowns.

The FAA has been chronically short on air traffic controllers for years. But former FAA air traffic control chief Mike McCormick said that LaGuardia is "not a control tower that has perennial staffing problems."

At the time of this crash, however, the tower would have been lightly staffed during the overnight shift, he said.

LaGuardia is one of 35 major U.S. airports with an advanced surface surveillance system designed to help keep track of planes and vehicles crossing the airport.

An alarm heard in the background of the air traffic control audio was likely from the system and would have prompted all eyes in the tower to look for the potential collision, McCormick said.

"It's an aid in a situation like this," he said, but the system doesn't know if someone has given clearance for a vehicle to cross a runway.

FAA statistics show there were 1,636 runway incursions last year.

LaGuardia was the 19th busiest U.S. airport in 2024, with over 16.7 million passengers boarding there, according to a 2025 FAA database.

LaGuardia Airport in New York was closed for hours following a collision between a Port Authority airport vehicle and an Air Canada regional plane that killed the pilot and co-pilot and injured more than a dozen others late Sunday night.

The Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada that was involved in the collision was traveling from Montreal to New York. A spokesperson for the FDNY said firefighters responded to the incident at 11:38 p.m. on Sunday.

Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the front of the CRJ-900 aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, a damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.

The airport reopened and resumed operations with a single runway at 2 p.m. on Monday.