The cockpit voice recorder of an Air Canada Express jet captured how the air traffic control tower at New York’s LaGuardia Airport failed to recognize that it had granted permission for both the plane and an emergency vehicle to use the same runway before their deadly collision late Sunday, federal officials said.
At a news conference Tuesday, National Transportation Safety Board officials shared a timeline of events heard during the last three minutes of audio from the recorder, which investigators recovered at the crash site Monday by cutting a hole through the roof of the plane.
The LaGuardia air traffic controller granted permission for an emergency vehicle to cross the runway, but about two minutes earlier, officials said, another controller had cleared the flight to land on the same runway. The controller instructed the emergency vehicle to stop at least twice, according to officials’ summary, but it was too late.
The NTSB officials said breakdowns across both the air traffic control staff and aviation safety technology at LaGuardia may have contributed to the collision, which happened about 11:40 p.m. Sunday, killing two pilots and leaving dozens of passengers injured. The agency’s probe is ongoing, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters, and investigators have yet to interview the air traffic controllers or the two firefighters who were in the emergency vehicle Sunday night.
Officials have not publicly identified the pilots who were killed in the crash. Most of the people taken to the hospital afterward have been released. Both firefighters were in stable condition, officials said Monday.
Though there were two air traffic controllers working the night shift during Sunday’s crash, one appeared to have dual responsibilities, which is typical during overnight shifts, officials said. And while LaGuardia, one of the busiest airports in the United States, has a surveillance system intended to help air traffic controllers track aircraft and vehicles and ultimately prevent collisions, that system did not send an alert to the tower Sunday, officials said, probably because the emergency vehicle was not equipped with a device that would have helped trigger one.
In the tower Sunday, officials said, were one local controller, managing active runways and LaGuardia’s airspace, and a “controller in charge” responsible for the safety of operations. One of them was also functioning as the “ground controller,” directing all movement on taxiways rather than active runways, officials said.
While the ground controller is sometimes its own position, it is standard procedure at LaGuardia to combine those responsibilities with another position during the night shift, Homendy said. She said it was unclear as of Tuesday afternoon which of the two controllers was also handling ground movements.
They were both working a shift that typically ranges from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., when air traffic controllers have historically experienced fatigue, Homendy said.
“We have no indication that was a factor here, but it is a shift that we have been focused on in past investigations,” she said.
The cockpit voice recorder had more than 25 hours of good-quality audio, which will be fully transcribed Wednesday, Homendy said.
Its last few minutes capture overlapping instructions from the control tower — and calls for the vehicle to stop crossing — moments before the crash.
About two minutes and 22 seconds before the cockpit recording ends, the flight crew checked in with LaGuardia. Five seconds later, the tower cleared the plane to land on Runway 4, adding that it was second in line for landing.
Shortly after, the flight crew began adjusting the plane’s flaps to prepare for landing. One minute and 12 seconds before the recording ends, the crew told the tower they had completed their landing checklist.
At one minute and three seconds, the emergency vehicle, which was responding to an issue with a separate aircraft, made a radio transmission — but it was “stepped on,” meaning someone else was communicating on the same frequency and the transmission was disrupted, according to the NTSB. Doug Brazy, an NTSB aviation accident investigator who is leading the LaGuardia probe, said investigators have not identified the source of the overlapping transmission.
Twenty seconds before the recording ends, the tower granted permission for the emergency vehicle to cross Runway 4. By then, the plane was only about 100 feet from the ground.
Eight seconds later, the tower told a different aircraft, a Frontier Airlines flight, to hold its position. At the same time, the Air Canada Express flight was about 30 feet above ground.
Three seconds after that, the controller told the vehicle to stop. One second later, the recording captured what was probably the sound of the plane’s gear touching down on the runway, the NTSB said.
Four seconds before the recording ended, the controller told the vehicle to stop again. By that time, it was too late.
There were other vehicles behind the firefighting truck that did not begin to cross the runway, Homendy said, but she did not share how many there were.
The vehicle that collided with the plane did not have a transponder, she said, meaning LaGuardia’s surveillance system did not have information on its exact location and movement the way it would have for the aircraft.
Air traffic control audio posted to LiveATC.com, a website that broadcasts tower communications in real-time, captured some of the crash’s aftermath.
Just over 15 minutes after the crash, a controller told a pilot that he tried to prevent the collision, according to the recording.
“I tried to reach out to ’em … and we were dealing with an emergency earlier, and I messed up,” the controller said.
“No, man, you did the best you could,” the pilot responded.
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