Two dead in LaGuardia Airport collision
March 23, 2026, 1:13 AM EDT / Updated March 23, 2026, 7:42 PM EDT
By Jonathan Dienst, Jay Blackman, Josh Cradduck, Tom Costello and Corky Siemaszko
New York’s LaGuardia Airport reopened Monday, 14 hours after two pilots were killed and dozens of passengers were injured when an arriving plane collided with a fire truck on a runway.
Air Canada Flight 8646 had just landed with 72 passengers and four crew members when it struck the Port Authority fire-rescue vehicle responding to a separate issue on another flight around 11:40 p.m. Sunday, officials said.
“It was a disaster the likes of which we’ve not seen here in three decades,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference at the airport in Queens shortly after flights resumed at 2 p.m.
Air traffic control audio recordings obtained earlier appeared to show a controller had cleared the fire truck to cross the runway before suddenly telling it to stop.
“I messed up,” an air traffic controller was heard saying on the recording.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at the news conference that he did not want to “front-run” the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, who are leading the probe.
“I can’t give you specifics on what went wrong,” Duffy said.
But when he was asked about viral rumors that only one air traffic controller was working in the tower at the time of the accident, he insisted, “That’s not accurate.”
Duffy, in an earlier interview with NBC News, said the Federal Aviation Administration was specifically looking into whether air traffic control staffing figured into the incident.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference Monday evening that air traffic controller staffing would be a part of the agency’s probe, which was launched before sunrise Monday and could still be staffing up through early Tuesday as a result of travel delays.
The NTSB will also look at air traffic controllers’ communication training and have asked to see an FAA replay of the events via a surveillance system known as Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE), Homendy said. That could help determine whether controllers knew in real time where the aircraft and the Port Authority vehicle were just before the collision, she said.
“We will be looking at that — where we can see where the aircraft was at certain times and whether the truck was visible on ASDE,” she said.
She said investigators will also focus on whether ASDE generated alerts before the collision.
Port Authority personnel and emergency responders cut a hole in the roof of the aircraft, dropped into it and retrieved its cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, Homendy said. The NTSB has them for analysis, she said.
The voice recorder was not damaged, and the data recorder will be checked out Tuesday, she said.
At least one controller who cleared traffic late Monday was removed from duty, she said, with NTSB investigators hoping to interview the person.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is sending a team to LaGuardia that includes technical advisers, Homendy said. It will be a part of the NTSB’s investigative group assigned to the collision, she said.
She emphasized the board’s independence from the FAA, which employs air traffic controllers but will also participate in the probe. And she said the investigation will be thorough.
“We don’t speculate,” Homendy said. “We don’t take one person at their word.”
Duffy also warned that while LaGuardia has reopened, “we are going to be running at very reduced capacity for some time.”
Forty-one of the people who were on the plane were treated for injuries, some of them serious, at local hospitals, Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at a news conference earlier Monday. So far, 32 have been released from hospitals.
The Port Authority identified the occupants of the fire truck as Sgt. Michael Orsillo and Officer Adrian Baez.
Garcia said their injuries were not life-threatening.
The plane, a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, was completing its landing and going about 30 mph when it struck the truck, officials said.
The truck was responding to an odor report on a United flight elsewhere at the airport, Garcia said.
In the air traffic controller audio recording, the controller says the flight attendants on the United flight are feeling ill because of the odor. In another recording, a controller requests permission to cross the runway.
Moments later, a controller is heard repeatedly telling “Truck 1” to stop.
A video on social media shows a passenger jet on the runway with its cockpit high and the underside of its forward fuselage mangled.
An Air Canada Express CRJ-900 on the runway after it collided with a Port Authority fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York.Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
The collision at LaGuardia’s Runway 4 is the latest blow to the beleaguered aviation industry, which has been grappling for years with a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers — and is now contending with a severe shortage of Transportation Security Administration workers due to the partial government shutdown.
A Port Authority aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle lies on its side off Runway 4 on Monday.Ryan Murphy / AP
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the passengers on the plane who “kept one another calm” amid the chaos, and he released a phone number set up by Air Canada that people can call for information about their loved ones.
That number is 800-961-7099.
There were also transportation woes Monday at another area airport, Newark Liberty International Airport across the Hudson River in New Jersey. A brief ground stop was ordered after a control tower was evacuated when smoke was detected in an elevator.
Jonathan Dienst is chief justice contributor for NBC News and chief investigative reporter for WNBC-TV in New York.
Jay Blackman
Jay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas as transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.
Josh Cradduck
Assignment Editor, NBC News
Tom Costello
Tom Costello is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C.
Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.
Bella LoBue, Jean Lee, Patrick Smith and Dennis Romero contributed.