Fire truck in LaGuardia runway collision had no transponder, limiting tower’s ability to track it, NTSB says

By Zoe Sottile, Cindy Von Quednow, CNN

(CNN) — A fire truck involved in the fatal collision with an Air Canada plane at New York’s LaGuardia Airport was not equipped with a transponder — technology that helps air traffic controllers identify and track vehicles on the airfield — the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

Also, the airport’s surface detection equipment – ASDE-X – didn’t generate an alert ahead of the collision “due to the close proximity of vehicles merging and unmerging near the runway, resulting in the inability to create a track of high confidence,” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

Those were among the latest details announced Tuesday in the investigation into Sunday night’s collision, in which officials said the plane, which had just touched down, struck the truck as it crossed the runway. The CRJ-900 was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members; two firefighters were on the truck.

The collision killed the plane’s pilot and copilot and injured dozens of people, including a flight attendant who was thrown from the plane while still strapped to her seat.

Canadian and American authorities are investigating the collision, which follows several high-profile aviation disasters in 2025 — including a shocking midair collision between a military helicopter and a commercial jet near Washington, DC, which left 67 dead — that brought scrutiny to the industry and triggered calls for reform.

It is the first fatal crash at LaGuardia, the New York area’s third-busiest airport, in 34 years, Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said Monday.

Sunday night’s collision caused LaGuardia – a major transit hub that served more than 32 million passengers last year – to close for about 14 hours Monday, forcing hundreds of flights to be canceled. It reopened with only one of its two runways; runway 4, where the collision happened, is expected to remain closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The closure came as a Department of Homeland Security funding shutdown has led to TSA staffing shortages and massive lines at airports across the country, with some passengers reporting hours spent waiting to go through security.

There’s no evidence the shutdown contributed to the collision; air traffic controllers, unlike TSA agents, are still paid during this partial shutdown.

Here’s what we know about the collision.

Plane struck fire truck on runway

Fewer than three minutes elapsed between the Air Canada flight being cleared to land and its collision with the fire truck.

Air Canada Flight 8646 took off from Montreal-Trudeau International Airport shortly after 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday. The plane arrived at LaGuardia about an hour later, according to the flight tracking site FlightRadar24. It was cleared to land around 11:35 p.m.

The fire truck, meanwhile, was on its way to help a plane that had reported an emergency on the other side of the airport. United Flight 2384, bound for Chicago, had aborted takeoff because of a warning light around 11:18 p.m. As controllers worked to find a gate for that plane, the pilots reported an odor in the cabin had sickened the flight attendants, according to a LiveATC.com recording of air traffic control audio.

The crew of the fire truck – a Port Authority aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle – was dispatched to respond to the United flight. The fire truck crew requested permission to cross the runway where the Air Canada aircraft was landing.

Just 10 seconds after granting permission for the fire truck to cross, a controller seemed to reverse course and told it to stop, the audio indicates.

“Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop, truck 1. Stop,” he said.

The collision happened around 11:38 p.m. The controller can then be heard directing other aircraft to abort their landings and “go around,” noting the runway was closed.

The Air Canada plane was traveling about 104 mph just before it hit the fire truck, according to the last data point collected before the collision by Flightradar24.

Tuesday, the NTSB laid out a summary of events captured on the plane’s cockpit voice recorder during the recording’s final three minutes. All times count down to the end of the transmission:

• 2 minutes, 17 seconds before the end of the recording: The LaGuardia tower clears the Air Canada flight to land on runway 4. The crew then adjusts and sets the wing flaps to prepare for landing. The landing gear was already lowered.
• 1 minute, 26 seconds: An electronic callout indicates the plane is 1,000 feet above the ground.
• 1 minute, 3 seconds: An airport vehicle makes a radio transmission to the tower, but that transmission is “stepped on” – interrupted – by another radio transmission. The source of that transmission has yet to be identified, the NTSB said.
• 54 seconds: The flight crew acknowledges the plane is 500 feet above the ground and on a stable approach.
• 40 seconds: The tower asks which vehicle needed to cross a runway.
• 28 seconds: The fire truck makes a radio transmission to the tower. The tower acknowledges the transmission, and the truck requests to cross runway 4 at taxiway Delta.
• 20 seconds: The tower clears the fire truck to cross runway 4 at taxiway Delta.
• 19 seconds: An electronic callout indicates the plane is 100 feet above the ground.
• 17 seconds: The truck reads back the runway crossing clearance. Over the next four seconds, the plane continues its descent.
• 9 seconds: The tower instructs the fire truck to stop.
• 8 seconds: The plane’s landing gear can be heard touching down on the runway.
• 4 seconds: The tower again instructs the fire truck to stop.
• 0 seconds: The recording ends.

The fire truck was given clearance to cross the runway while the approaching plane was only about 100 feet above the ground, NTSB investigator Doug Brazy said Tuesday.

The truck is well fortified with many windows and good visibility for the specific high-risk environment of airports in emergency situations.

It wasn’t, however, equipped with a transponder, which would have allowed air traffic controllers to track the vehicle’s movement along the tarmac. Instead, they relied on radar.

“What it looks like on a replay are 2 blobs … on taxiway Delta. We also don’t see any of them go in front of the plane on the runway,” Homendy said of the radar feed.

The pilots would have seen the lineup of the truck and other emergency vehicles as they approached to land, Aaron Murphy, a Canadian commercial pilot and flight instructor, told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“Giving them even more comfort that the emergency vehicles are holding their position … You’re expecting the plan to go as planned,” Murphy said.

Chaos and fear on board

Of the 76 people on board the plane, 39 were sent to hospitals, Air Canada said Tuesday, adding all but six have been discharged. It did not give details about injuries.

The two firefighters in the truck, identified Monday as Sgt. Michael Orsillo and Officer Adrian Baez, were injured. Baez was released Monday, the Port Authority said.

Passengers have described chaos as the flight landed and collided with the truck.

“We went down for a regular landing; we came in pretty hard. We immediately hit something,” said Jack Cabot.

“It was just chaos in there,” Cabot said. “Everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming pretty quickly.”

Another passenger, Rebecca Liquori, described a “very loud boom” as the plane struck the vehicle.

“Everybody just jolted out of their seats,” Liquori, who had taken a one-day trip to Canada for a baby shower, recalled. “People hit their heads, people were bleeding.”

Without any direction from crew members, passengers decided on their own to open the emergency exit and flee the plane, Liquori and Cabot said.

Video captured by Cabot shows passengers standing on the wing of the aircraft as they exit the plane.

At one point, the aircraft is seen slowly tilting upward as debris hangs from its front.

“All passengers come this way, come this way,” someone can be heard saying on a loudspeaker.

‘I messed up,’ controller says in audio recording

Eighteen minutes after the plane collided with the fire truck, an air traffic controller in the tower appeared to say to a pilot on the ground radio frequency: “I messed up.”

The exchange took place with a Frontier Airlines pilot who saw the crash and was waiting to return to the gate.

“That, that wasn’t good to watch,” the pilot said in audio recorded by LiveATC.net.

“Yeah, I know. I tried to reach out to them,” the noticeably distraught controller said. “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”

The pilot responded, “Nah man, you did the best you could.”

The air traffic communications will be a part of the FAA and NTSB’s extensive investigation into the cause of the crash. Determining the root cause of an accident can take a year or longer and often involves multiple contributing factors.

At the time of the collision, there were two air traffic controllers in the tower, tasked with multiple duties, and there is conflicting information about who was conducting which duties, Homendy said Tuesday.

The controllers checked in for their eight-hour shifts at 10:30 p.m. and 10:45 p.m. respectively.

One was the local controller, tasked with managing active runways and the airspace immediately surrounding the airport, Homendy said. The other was the controller-in-charge, who oversees the safety of all air traffic operations.

On the night of the crash, the controller-in-charge was also responsible for giving pilots departure clearance, Homendy said.

The NTSB says the staffing was standard operating procedure and that it’s not clear who was controlling aircraft and vehicles on the ground.

There’s a “give and take” with how much officials want one air traffic controller to do, former FAA safety inspector David Soucie told CNN’s Boris Sanchez.

“Do you want them to do everything?” he said. “In this case, it didn’t work.”

Murphy, the commercial pilot, said the air traffic controllers involved in Sunday’s incident are not to blame.

“This is not your fault,” Murphy said directly to the air traffic controllers. “This is you trying to make procedures work that are completely unacceptable with a dysfunctional governance that needs to smarten up. Because if this continues, we’re going to have more accidents just like this one.”

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the labor union representing controllers, did not provide comment when reached by CNN.

Pilot and copilot killed

The pilots were “young men at the start of their careers,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said at a news conference Monday.

The pilot was Antoine Forest, according to the Toronto Star, which cited a family member, Jeannette Gagnier.

The copilot was Mackenzie Gunther, according to the college where he earned a degree and Canadian media outlets CTV and CBC. Gunther was the flight’s first officer and died in the collision, Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto said in an online post.

Both pilots died from blunt force injuries, and the manner of death was accidental, according to New York City’s office of the chief medical examiner, citing autopsies. The office did not release their names.

The Air Line Pilots Association called the deaths of the pilot and copilot a “profound tragedy.”

“These pilots dedicated their careers to the safe transport of passengers, and we are all thinking of their families, loved ones, and colleagues at Jazz Aviation during this devastating time,” Capt. Jason Ambrosi, ALPA president, said in the statement.

The union said its accident investigation team is heading to assist the NTSB and is providing support to pilots and families involved.

Gunther graduated from Seneca Polytechnic’s honors bachelor of aviation technology program in 2023, school spokesperson Cam Gordon told CNN Tuesday. Flags on campus will be lowered to half-staff Tuesday to honor Gunther, the school said.

Gunther joined Jazz Aviation, the operator of the Air Canada Express flight, right after graduation, according to the school.

Dozens injured

Other Port Authority firefighters witnessed the crash and quickly began “evacuating the passengers, securing their safety while not knowing if their fellow officers in Truck 1 were dead or alive,” the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association said in a statement.

The attendant who was thrown from the plane was identified as Solange Tremblay by her daughter, Sarah Lépine, in an interview with CNN affiliate TVA Nouvelles. Lépine said her mother suffered multiple fractures, was taken to the hospital and will undergo surgery for a broken leg.

“It’s all a miracle,” her daughter said. “At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 100 meters from the plane. They found her and she was still strapped in her seat. She had a guardian angel who was looking right at her. It could have been so much worse.”

Investigators checking plane’s recorders

The cockpit voice recorder captured more than 25 hours of audio, while the flight data recorder contained around 80 hours of data, Brazy said Tuesday.

The NTSB will convene a cockpit voice recorder group scheduled for Wednesday at the agency’s headquarters in Washington to review the accident flight recording and produce a written transcript, Brazy said.

Port Authority, which runs the airport, and other emergency responders cut a hole in the roof of the plane to retrieve the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder on Monday, Homendy said.

The scene was littered Monday with wreckage from the collision: There is a “tremendous amount of debris” on the runway and “hazardous material” on the fire truck that was hit, Homendy said.

Canadian and US officials are working closely together on the investigation into the collision, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday, calling the collision “deeply saddening” in a post on X.

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CNN’s Alisha Ebrahimji, Pete Muntean, Lauren Mascarenhas, Chris Boyette, Aaron Cooper, Paula Newton, Shimon Prokupecz, Carolyn Sung, Martin Goillandeau, Karina Tsui, Gloria Pazmino, Sara Smart, Leigh Waldman, Joel Williams, Hanna Park, Sarah Dewberry and Andi Babineau contributed to this report.