The first information about the accident at LaGuardia airport, where a plane crashed into a fire truck. What didn't work
The first details from the official investigation into the LaGuardia plane crash raise serious questions about what happened in the critical moments before the collision between the Air Canada plane and the fire truck.
The plane collided with a fire truck on the runway. PHOTO: Profimedia
The American Transportation Safety Authority published, on Tuesday, March 24, the first official information regarding the accident that happened Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport in New York, where an Air Canada Express plane collided with a fire truck.
According to her, the system that should have allowed traffic controllers to track the movement of aircraft and ground vehicles in real time did not issue any alert at the time of impact.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the independent agency leading the investigation, is still analyzing the circumstances of the collision between the CRJ-900 aircraft operated by Jazz Aviation and the emergency response vehicle on the runway, as a result of which two pilots lost their lives and dozens of people among the 72 passengers and four crew members were injured.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy explained that the ASDE-X surveillance system did not alert air traffic controllers because of the inability to generate an accurate tracking path as multiple vehicles entered and exited the runway area.
“The ASDE-X system did not generate an alert due to the proximity of vehicles entering and exiting the runway area, which prevented the creation of a tracking trajectory with a high degree of certainty,” said Jennifer Homendy.
She also stated that the fire truck involved in the accident, which was on the runway to intervene on another aircraft, was not equipped with a transponder, unlike similar vehicles at other American airports.
Jennifer Homendy stressed, however, that it was not yet determined whether additional technology could have prevented the impact, given that everything happened “very quickly”. According to NTSB data, there were two air traffic controllers in the control tower at LaGuardia Airport at the time of the accident.
Sunday's accident had significant consequences for airport operations: for the second day in a row, LaGuardia faced massive delays and flight cancellations on Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that one of the airport's two runways will not reopen until Friday.
