Air traffic controller staffing at LaGuardia Airport on the night of the fatal March 22 collision between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck may have violated the facility’s procedures by combining roles before midnight, according to a document seen by Reuters. The crash, which killed both pilots, has revived concerns over U.S. air traffic control staffing shortages and the workload of controllers nationwide. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy stated that two controllers were working in the glass-enclosed section of the control tower: a local controller managing active runways and airspace, and a controller-in-charge who was also providing departure clearance to pilots.
The controller-in-charge, responsible for safety of operations, signed in at 10:30 p.m., while the local controller signed on at 10:45 p.m. According to LaGuardia’s standard operating procedures, the local and ground positions should not have been combined until midnight at the earliest. On the night of the crash, weather-related delays led to 70 commercial flights taking off or landing between 10 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., significantly higher than the average of 53 flights in the same timeframe since 2022, and the 31 that were originally scheduled. Several controllers interviewed described the workload that night as busy, suggesting additional controllers would typically be brought in or would stay past their shifts to manage such heavy traffic.
Investigators are examining why a runway warning system did not alert to the potential collision and who was coordinating air and ground traffic, especially as the controllers were also juggling a late-night emergency involving a United Airlines jet with an odor in its cabin. The NTSB indicated that 25 seconds before the crash, the fire truck requested to cross the same runway where the Air Canada plane had been cleared to land nearly two minutes prior. One controller cleared the truck to cross five seconds later, when the plane was about 100 feet from the ground. Nine seconds before impact, the tower instructed the fire truck to stop, a second before the plane’s landing gear touched down. This incident marks the first fatal crash at LaGuardia in 34 years, killing pilots Antoine Forest, 30, and Mackenzie Gunther, 24, and injuring 39 people, including the two in the fire truck.
