‘I messed up’: Footage shows Air Canada jet hit fire truck as controller panicked

New York: Air-traffic controllers were helping a fire truck’s crew navigate a rain-slicked tarmac at New York’s LaGuardia when panic suddenly set in.

The crew had been summoned to inspect a United Airlines jet preparing to take off before midnight on Sunday (New York time). The drama that followed would quickly become the latest in a series of deadly US aviation disasters.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” a controller can be heard saying about 11.37pm. “Stop, Truck 1, stop! Stop, Truck 1, stop!” the controller continues, becoming increasingly frantic.

A voice that sounds like the same controller then instructs an arriving Delta Air Lines plane to perform a go-around, an aviation manoeuvre in which a pilot aborts landing and climbs back to a safe altitude. The controller quickly turns to an Air Canada Express plane operated by Jazz Aviation, acknowledging that the aircraft had struck a truck on the ground.

“I see you collided with a vehicle there. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now,” he said.

Almost 20 minutes later, a person appearing to be the same controller can be heard discussing the airport’s closure following the collision with a pilot of a Frontier Airlines flight.

“That wasn’t good to watch,” the pilot can be heard saying over air traffic audio.

The controller replies that he tried to get the truck to stop, adding, “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”

The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane, operated by its regional partner Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal, said Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Social media footage showed the moment of impact as the fire truck crossed into the aircraft’s path as it landed, destroying its cockpit and forward fuselage. The plane was travelling at more than 200 km/h at the moment of impact, according to law enforcement sources.

Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the forward section, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, a damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.

Both the pilot and co-pilot were pronounced dead at the scene. Another 41 people were transported to hospital, according to the Port Authority. Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC, identified the pilot as Antoine Forest from Quebec and, citing Radio-Canada sources, the co-pilot as MacKenzie Gunther.

One flight attendant was thrown from the aircraft, still strapped into the jump seat, and was found by police on the runway, a senior law enforcement official told Bloomberg.

Flight attendant Solange Tremblay suffered multiple fractures to one leg and will need surgery, her daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Canadian news station TVA Nouvelles, describing her survival as “a total miracle”.

“I’m still trying to understand how all this happened, but she definitely has a guardian angel watching over her,” Lépine told the station.

Passenger Rebecca Liquori said the plane hit turbulence while descending, and she then felt it brake hard and heard a loud boom.

“Everybody just jolted out of their seats. People hit their heads. People were bleeding,” Liquori told News12 Long Island.

Liquori, who said she helped open the emergency exit door, recalled passengers helping each other slide down a wing to get out.

“I’m just happy to be alive,” said Liquori, who had gone to Montreal for a cousin’s baby shower. “I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I’ve done countless times … ending like this.”

Another passenger described chaos in the moments after the crash. “Everybody was hunkered down, everybody was screaming,” Jack Cabot told WABC-TV, adding that they weren’t getting instructions because the flight deck had been destroyed.

“So somebody said, ‘let’s get the emergency exit and get the door and let’s all jump out’, and that’s exactly what we did.”

Controllers under scrutiny

A key part of the crash investigation will be examining the co-ordination of the airport’s air traffic and ground traffic at the time of the crash, said Mary Schiavo, a former Department of Transportation inspector-general.

“This has been happening for years, and sadly, some of the most horrific air crashes in history happen on the ground at the airport.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said LaGuardia was “well-staffed” but still faced a shortage of air-traffic controllers. He said there were 33 certified controllers, but the goal was to have 37. More than one controller was on duty at the time of the accident, he said.

“I can’t give specifics on what went wrong,” Duffy said, deferring to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the inquiry. Canada has also sent a team of investigators.

The crash closed LaGuardia – the New York region’s third-busiest hub – during what was already a difficult time at US airports because of a partial government shutdown.

Flights resumed on Monday afternoon (US time) on one runway, with lengthy delays. The closure caused some disruptions at other airports, too, especially for Delta, which has a major presence at LaGuardia.

The tragedy follows a string of fatal aviation disasters last year, including a midair collision between a regional commercial jet and a US Army helicopter outside Washington that killed 67 people and a fiery UPS freighter crash that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen people onboard the aircraft and on the ground.

There have been many previous incidents of planes colliding with catering trucks and other vehicles while taxiing, but these events often occur at very low speeds and rarely result in fatalities.

These events are placed under a broad category of safety incidents known as runway incursions, which can range from relatively benign events such as a pilot edging slightly past painted lines they’re supposed to stop at before entering a runway, but there aren’t any landing or departing aircraft in the vicinity that pose an immediate safety risk to more serious situations, such as collisions.

The US Federal Aviation Administration disclosed 97 runway incursions in January, according to the most recently available data posted on its website.

Bloomberg, AP, Reuters

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.