Two people were killed and several others badly hurt when an Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck on a runway while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late Sunday night, officials said.
The pilot and copilot were killed in the collision, which crushed the nose of the aircraft, while 41 passengers and crew members were taken to area hospitals, some with serious injuries. Most have since been released from treatment, authorities said.
Two Port Authority employees who were traveling in the fire truck suffered injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, said Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.
The pilot and copilot were both based out of Canada, Garcia said during a news conference early Monday.
The airport will remain closed until at least 2 p.m. Monday to facilitate the investigation, which is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The fire truck was traveling across the runway to respond to a separate incident aboard a United airlines flight, whose pilot had reported “an issue with odor,” said Garcia, who deferred additional questions about the sequence of events leading up to the crash to the NTSB.
There were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the aircraft, a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, according to a statement from the airline. The flight originated at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the major airport serving Montreal.
Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the front of the aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, a damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.
Stairways used to evacuate passengers from aircraft were pushed up to the emergency exits on the jet, a Bombardier CRJ. The impact left the jet with its crumpled nose tilted upward.
In the moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard on a radio transmission giving clearance to a vehicle to cross part of the tarmac, then trying to stop it.
“Stop, Truck 1. Stop,” the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting incoming aircraft from landing.
Jazz Aviation issued a statement confirming the accident and noting the passenger and crew list was preliminary and subject to confirmation.
Early Monday, some passengers who had arrived at LaGuardia hours before their flights hoping to beat security lines during the ongoing government funding lapse straggled out of the airport, rebooked for Tuesday. Others were hastening to other airports, as far as Long Island MacArthur in suburban Ronkonkoma, to try to catch their flights.
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