Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll get details on the collision of a jetliner and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport as the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation picks up speed. We’ll also look at why about 950 professors at New York University are on strike.
It was late on a Sunday night with fog and mist hanging low and rain falling at LaGuardia Airport. A jet had aborted its takeoff, and a fire truck had been dispatched after the pilots reported an odor in the cabin.
The control tower gave the fire truck permission to cross Runway 4. Then a controller said, “Stop, Truck 1, stop” — but it was too late. An inbound Air Canada Express jet slammed into the fire truck, killing the two pilots and sending dozens of passengers and the two firefighters in the truck to hospitals.
It appeared to be the first crash with fatalities at LaGuardia in more than 30 years.
And with more than 500 flights canceled and LaGuardia closed until early yesterday afternoon, it added to the disruptions for travelers delayed by the partial government shutdown, which has left employees of the Transportation Security Administration working without pay and led to long lines on the way to security checkpoints for hours before the crash.
President Trump blamed Democrats for the shutdown and sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who are being paid — to airports including LaGuardia.
But even the National Transportation Safety Board was affected by the partial shutdown. The agency’s air traffic control specialist stood in a security line for three hours at an airport in Houston “until we called,” the chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, said, “to beg to see if we could get her through so we could get her here.”
“We drove up, a number of us,” Homendy, who is based in Washington, said during a briefing at LaGuardia yesterday.
Homendy said the investigation was still in its earliest stages. She said that Port Authority employees and emergency workers had cut a hole in the roof of the fuselage and “dropped down” to retrieve the so-called black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. She said that they “were not damaged” and that the flight data recorder should help pinpoint where the plane was when the fire truck was cleared to cross the runway.
The hobbled jet was still on the runway when LaGuardia reopened, with planes taking off from a different runway. When Homendy was asked how long the runway would remain closed — increasing the chances of delays — she said, “It’s going to be days.”
She said the agency needed to document and collect debris on the closed runway, and “there is a tremendous, tremendous amount of debris.”
Were the controllers distracted?
A recording of audio from the tower suggested that air traffic controllers might have been distracted by the plane that had aborted its takeoff.
Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, said on Monday that LaGuardia was “a well-staffed airport,” with 33 controllers and seven more in training, although he said it had a target of 37 fully certified controllers. But he did not say how many were on duty on Sunday night.
He said there was a “rumor” that only one controller had been in the tower on Sunday night. The rumor was “not accurate,” he said.
Two people briefed on the matter said two controllers had been working in the tower when the crash occurred.
Homendy said the crash occurred “midshift.” The overnight shift in the tower typically runs from 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., she said, adding that the exact schedule would be confirmed today.
An eerie coincidence
The crash occurred 34 years to the day after another Sunday night crash at LaGuardia. That accident involved a USAir jetliner that ran off the runway as it attempted to take off in a snowstorm. Of the 47 passengers and four crew members aboard, 27 died, including the pilot, and 24 were injured.
Investigators soon began looking at whether the plane had waited too long to take off after being de-iced. The flight ended with the plane dangling off the runway and bodies floating in Flushing Bay. Some survivors swam to safety as the plane dangled over the edge of the runway.
Weather
A sunny day is ahead with temperatures in the high 40s. Tonight, expect increasing clouds and a low around 39.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until April 2 (Holy Thursday, Passover)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think I’ve had better Indian food in New York, but it was just for the overall experience.” — Natalie Bosu, on why the FX series “Love Story,” about John F. Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette, inspired her (and her fiancé) to go to Panna II, a restaurant in the East Village.
The latest Metro news
-
Can schools change the course? As U.S. cities struggle to quash a rise in hateful harassment, vandalism and rhetoric, New York City is rolling out lessons on Jewish and Muslim American history in schools.
-
Federal judges appoints a new U.S. attorney in New Jersey: Robert Frazer, a career prosecutor, was appointed New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney. Veterans say Frazer could bring some stability to an office that has been in chaos for much of the last year.
-
Pro-Palestinian rally in Paterson, N.J.: Leqaa Kordia, the Columbia protester who was released after more than a year in ICE detention, spoke at a news conference, which was accompanied by a rally in support of the Palestinian cause.
-
How a family making $500,000 per year budgets: Anala Gossai and Brendon O’Leary say child care for their 1-year-old is more expensive than their apartment across from Central Park, which costs $3,900 per month.
About 950 professors go on strike at N.Y.U.
At New York University, the Monday after spring break began with a twist: About 950 full-time faculty members who are not on a tenure track walked out.
But students did not get an extended holiday. The university said that classes would continue.
The strike began at 11 a.m., several minutes after the university’s lawyers responded to the union’s final offer, according to Brendan Hogan, a spokesman for the union, the Contract Faculty United-UAW. “There was a lot of 11th-hour back and forth between the bargaining committee and management” in a negotiating session that had been going on for 26 hours. “But their response to our final proposal came to us at around 10:53 a.m.” — too close to the revised strike deadline “for careful consideration.”
A spokesman for N.Y.U. said the strike was “fundamentally unnecessary.” He said that the university had offered what he called “a generous and comprehensive package that would improve the lives of every one of its members, including significant raises.”
The union had authorized the walkout in February in a vote that was approved by 90 percent of the members. Its members have complained that they are paid far less than colleagues who are on track for tenure or who work under contract. They demanded large pay increases and more job protections, as well as assistance with the cost of housing in New York, a benefit they said their colleagues receive.
“We’re bearing all of the housing costs, but we’re making around 60 percent of what the tenure-track faculty are making,” said Mr. Hogan, who teaches the history of philosophy. He said that the union’s members handled 29 percent of the teaching at N.Y.U. but received only 2 percent of the salaries paid to faculty members.
A spokesman for N.Y.U. said the university had offered to boost starting salaries for assistant professors above $90,000 a year, the highest at any private university in the country. Administrators had been planning for the strike by asking other instructors to cover classes taught by those on strike. “Every class has a plan in place to continue teaching and learning,” the university said on its website on Monday.
METROPOLITAN diary
Found and lost
Dear Diary:
I was on my way out of my Brooklyn building one morning when I noticed a set of keys lying on the stoop.
I decided to leave them there, thinking that whoever lost them might come looking for them. But that evening, they were slipped through our mail slot by a helpful delivery person who thought they belonged to us.
I took a picture of the keys and made a sign that said, “Did you lose these?” along with my phone number.
The next morning, I put the keys back on the stoop and posted the sign at the entrance to the park across the street.
My phone soon rang. It was my next-door neighbor.
“The keys are mine!” he said. “Thank you so much for finding them! Can I pick them up when I get back from walking the dog?”
“Sure,” I said. “They are right on our stoop.”
He called back later to say they weren’t there when he came to look for them.
Somebody must have taken them. What could we do?
I made a new sign. It said: “If you took these please bring them back!” I put it on the stoop in the same spot, with a small ceramic cup weighing it down.
When I got home, there were the keys, sitting in the cup.
— Isabel Kraut
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post What Went Wrong at LaGuardia? appeared first on New York Times.
