Air Canada Express Jet Hits Fire Truck at LaGuardia, Killing Both Pilots

An Air Canada Express regional jet collided with a Port Authority fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late Sunday night, killing both pilots, according to ABC News and Bloomberg Law. ABC News said the aircraft was a CRJ-900 operated by Jazz Aviation, arriving from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew, and that it struck the vehicle on Runway 4 at about 11:45 p.m. Reuters, citing a preliminary passenger list that was still subject to confirmation, gave the same passenger count.

The fire truck had been sent to an aborted takeoff elsewhere at the airport and had been cleared to cross the runway, ABC News reported. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the truck was responding to a separate incident when it was hit, according to Reuters. ABC News said all passengers were accounted for, and that an unaccompanied minor was reunited with family.

ABC News reported that at least 43 people were taken to hospitals, including two Port Authority officers; that count was not independently confirmed. Canadian authorities are taking part in the investigation because the plane was operated by a Canadian carrier, ABC News said, while the National Transportation Safety Board leads it because the crash happened in the United States.

The airport closed after the collision. ABC News reported that LaGuardia reopened at 2 p.m. Monday with a single runway, in line with the FAA estimate that Reuters had cited. The runway where the collision happened will stay closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to an FAA notice cited by ABC News.

Officials called it the airport’s first fatal crash in about three decades, ABC reported, and Bloomberg Law described it as the first deadly accident at LaGuardia in more than 30 years. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford called the deaths “an absolute tragedy” and described the pilots as “young men at the start of their career,” according to ABC News, which said he noted the crash fell 34 years to the day after the last fatal incident there.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Monday evening that the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had been recovered and sent to Washington, according to Bloomberg Law. “At this point in the investigation, we have questions on everything,” Homendy said, Bloomberg Law reported. ABC added that she described the voice recorder as undamaged and said there is “a lot of debris” that must be documented before evidence is collected.

No cause has been announced. Air Canada Chief Executive Michael Rousseau said, “We know this is a difficult day for everyone,” according to ABC News, adding that the airline is focused on passengers, crew and their families.