The wreckage of an Air Canada Express jet that collided with a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport on Monday.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
U.S. safety investigators are looking at whether factors such as staffing, fatigue and communication failures played roles in the fatal collision between an Air Canada Express passenger jet and a fire truck on the runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night.
Both Canadian pilots of the plane, Antoine Forest of Coteau-du-Lac, Que., and Mackenzie Gunther of Ontario, died when the Air Canada Express CRJ 900 carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal struck the emergency vehicle. The flight was operated by Jazz Aviation, a contractor to Air Canada.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said the first stages of the investigation found the fire truck did not have a transponder that would have made it visible in the control tower; a radio message from a vehicle to the tower shortly before the fatal crash was indecipherable because it was “stepped on” by another radio user; and the two air traffic controllers on duty were working a midnight shift and performing the jobs of others.
Experts say two pilots killed in Air Canada crash had little chance of survival
“When something goes wrong, that means many, many things went wrong,” Ms. Homendy said. “We’re here to prevent this from happening again.”
No other deaths have been reported. Forty-one people were taken to hospital, including two firefighters. One flight attendant, Solange Tremblay, was ejected from the plane still belted into her seat but survived with a broken leg.
Ms. Homendy said the two controllers, who were expected to be interviewed on Tuesday afternoon, were in charge of vehicles and planes on the apron, as well as aircraft using the runways. This is common practice for midnight shifts but makes for a heavy workload, she said.
The NTSB has raised concerns about fatigue being a factor in past investigations, she said, cautioning that the probe is at its early stages. She also questioned why the controllers were not relieved of duty immediately after the crash, and asked whether that was because there were no replacements immediately available.
Joe Capio, a passenger aboard the Air Canada jet, said he was still 'shaken up' and recounted the moments before the crash, which authorities said killed both pilots and injured dozens.
Reuters
Investigators have yet to fully transcribe the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, which are at the NTSB lab in Washington.
At the press conference, NTSB investigator Doug Brazy read out a summary of the final 3 minutes 7 seconds found on the cockpit voice recorder.
At 20 seconds before the recording ends, the air traffic controller cleared the fire truck to cross the runway, then told it to stop with eight and then four seconds left. “At zero seconds, the recording ended,” Mr. Brazy said.
Mr. Forest, one of the pilots who died, was remembered by flight instructor Roberto Baldin as a “bon vivant” who always wore a smile and loved to help others.
Mr. Baldin taught the young pilot in his third year at a college aviation program in Chicoutimi, Que., and frequently flew with him as he was studying to become a bush pilot. The two remained friends after Mr. Forest’s graduation in 2018.
Mr. Forest was always liked by those around him, Mr. Baldin said in an interview, and had a knack for bringing people together.
“He was someone who had a lot of empathy,” the instructor said. “I got the feeling that sometimes he understood people without even speaking to them.”
After his graduation, Mr. Forest worked for Air Saguenay, a now-defunct regional airline, and ExactAir, an aviation company in the same region, according to his LinkedIn page. He was hired by Jazz Aviation in 2022.
Christine Dussault, a family friend, said Mr. Forest was close to her son Kristopher and called him a “force of nature.” She said the two families met at a swimming club in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Que., when the boys were young.
“Our entire family swam with him since he was a young boy and as he was growing up,” she said in a message to The Globe and Mail, adding that he continued to swim competitively as an adult.
Ms. Dussault described him as a passionate young man who “found his freedom in the sky,” and was always looking for his next adventure. Mr. Forest’s Facebook profile shows photos of him kayaking and hiking in the mountains. In 2019, he went with her husband and son to Nepal to hike in the Himalayas, Ms. Dussault said.
“He illuminated our lives with his kindness and vibrant energy,” she said. “He left us too soon, too young, leaving behind a tremendous void, but also sparkling memories that will never fade.”
The plane’s first officer, Mr. Gunther, began working at Jazz after graduating from Seneca College in Peterborough, Ont., in 2023 with an honours bachelor of aviation technology, the school said in a memorial posted on its website. Flags at Seneca’s campuses flew at half-mast on Tuesday in his honour.
Daniel Biro, owner of Rapids End Coffee in Peterborough, said Mr. Gunther was a regular at his café, stopping in for a cold brew or Haitian coffee and a chat, sometimes with the woman he ended up marrying about a year ago.
Mr. Biro said he and Mr. Gunther became friends, and he enjoyed watching his career literally take off, as he moved near Ottawa to fly for Air Canada Express.
“He was just a kid starting his life,” Mr. Biro said. “They just got married. They just bought a house. It was a really good start.”
When he saw the news on Monday, he tried to contact Mr. Gunther to see if he was okay, knowing Montreal to New York was his regular route. “I texted him and I never heard back,” he said.
In aviation parlance, the LaGuardia tragedy was caused by a runway incursion – a plane, vehicle or person encroaching on an aircraft that is taking off or landing.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has reported that the number of such incidents has almost doubled since 2010, to 639 in 2024. This is despite new navigation and communication technologies. While most of these incursions were low-risk, “even a single collision could have catastrophic consequences,” the TSB said.
The NTSB’s Ms. Homendy said trucks at other airports have transponders that make them visible on air traffic control screens. LaGuardia has a ground radar system as well, but the fire truck and others behind it appeared on the system as indistinct blobs, she said. “So in this case, that vehicle did not have a transponder. And it would have been helpful,” she said, echoing U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s call to upgrade the country’s traffic control systems.
Controllers “have to have information on the ground movements, whether that’s aircraft or vehicles moving on the airport, in taxiways, on runways,” Ms. Homendy said. “They should have all the information. This is 2026.”