LaGuardia plane-truck collision timeline explained: How did the two cross paths on the runway?
LaGuardia Airport is closed following the deadly collision
NEW YORK (WABC) -- The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating after an Air Canada plane collided with a Port Authority fire truck late Sunday night, killing the pilot and co-pilot and injuring more than a dozen late Sunday night.
Preliminary data shows that Air Canada Express flight #AC8646 had landed on Runway 4 and was rolling down the runway when it collided with the truck crossing the runway.
Firefighters say they responded to the collision at 11:38 p.m. on Sunday.
Based on an air traffic control recording, the truck had requested permission and had been cleared by the air traffic controller to cross Runway 4 at taxiway Delta. Shortly after, the air traffic controller tells the vehicle to stop several times right before the collision.
"Stop, Truck 1. Stop," the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.
Eyewitness News' aviation expert John Del Giorno explained why plane and emergency truck crossed paths in the first place.
"LaGuardia operates with four main runways," Del Giorno said: "The fire truck was responding to a separate incident on the field at that time. There was a United airplane that was taking off on Runway 13. That airplane had an aborted takeoff with some sort of odor in the cabin. The pilot pulled over and requested emergency assistance. That's where the fire truck was going at the time this accident happened ... Those movements are completely governed by ATC ... permission has to be granted for that emergency vehicle to move."
Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the front of the aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, the damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.
The sheared-off cockpit caused the plane to tilt backwards when it came to a stop.
"The cockpit is disintegrated. It's a terrible accident," Del Giorno said. "If it was at full speed, the damage would have actually been worse to the airplane and to the fire truck."
Many questions remain about what exactly is to blame for the collision, as there may have been multiple points of failure in several safety systems.
Michael McCormick is the former vice president of the FAA and was once in charge of all of the airspace in the Tri-State.
He wants to know how many people were in the control tower, because initially it sounds like one person could have been doing the work of two people.
"What we've heard from that control tape, is it's the same voice that is clearing the aircraft to land and clearing the vehicles across the runway and a normal tower scenario it would be ground control working the surface traffic and tower control just working arrivals and departures," McCormick said.
Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said there was more than one person in the tower on Sunday night, but did not say what they were assigned to, or what they were doing at the time of the crash.
"I'm not going to give the data on that, that's the arrangement we have with the NTSB," he said during a briefing Monday evening.
Duffy also said that despite shortages, LaGuardia is a "well-staffed airport" when it comes to air traffic controllers. LaGuardia Airport has 33 of the target goal of 37 air traffic controllers, Duffy said, and there are seven more in training.
It's typical to downsize staff during overnight hours, but there is usually one person controlling ground traffic and another controlling arrivals and departures.
There are taxiway lights embedded in the runway that indicate when it's safe for planes and other vehicles to move -- that system operates independently of air traffic control, Del Giorno said.
LaGuardia Airport reopened at 2 p.m., but Runway 4 will remain closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to a public notice from the FAA.
This is the third incident involving planes at our local airports in the past three weeks. Earlier this month a plane clipped another parked plane at Newark and there was a near collision last week also at Newark.
Sunday night's incident was also not the first time a collision has happened at LaGuardia.
In March of 1997, a Gulfstream 2 jet collided with a broken down maintenance truck after it was given clearance to land. The NTSB had said the control tower "cleared the plane" to land, even though the vehicle was working on the same runway. No one was killed.
Eyewitness News tracked how many times runway incursions happen -- that's anytime something's on a runway in the path of a plane that shouldn't be.
Nationwide, there were more than 1,600 incursions last year. That's down 7% from the year before. In most cases, there was enough time to avoid an accident.
As for local airports over the past five years, LaGuardia had two non-fatal collisions, while JFK and Newark each had three non-fatal collisions.
It could take weeks, even months, before the NTSB releases information as to what caused the crash, and who was in the control tower and what they were doing.
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