Communication issues contributed to fatal LaGuardia crash, preliminary report shows

A number of issues appear to have contributed to the fatal runway collision between an Air Canada plane and a fire truck at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport last month, including the stretching of air traffic control resources, according to a preliminary report

A number of issues appear to have contributed to the fatal runway collision between an Air Canada plane and a fire truck at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport last month, including the stretching of air traffic control resources, according to a preliminary report.

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The March 22 crash killed two pilots and sent 40 others to the hospital after an air traffic controller cleared a fire truck to cross a runway where the Air Canada plane was already instructed to land. The report from the National Transportation Safety Board, released Thursday, did not identify a sole cause for the crash, but it did find overlapping issues in the two minutes prior to the collision that potentially contributed to the disaster.

Two people were staffed in the control tower, with one operating as the local controller while the other was operating as both the ground controller and controller-in-charge, according to the report. This was “consistent” with the watch schedule, the NTSB report said.