National Transportation Safety Board investigators inspect the wreckage of an Air Canada Express jet that collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York.NTSB/Reuters
The two pilots of an Air Canada Express flight who lost their lives in a crash with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport Sunday night likely had little chance of surviving their landing on a rain-slicked runway, aviation experts say.
They might not even have seen the Port Authority truck until it was too late. And when impact came, there would have been little to protect them because commercial aircraft are not designed to withstand collisions of that force.
“They really had no options and they unfortunately paid with their lives,” said David McNair, a professional pilot and former accident investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. “Once that truck went on the runway, there’s no place they could go.”
Two pilots killed after Air Canada jet crashes into fire truck at LaGuardia Airport
The Bombardier CRJ900 jet, en route from Montreal, touched down and was going an estimated 167 kilometres an hour when it slammed into the emergency vehicle, according to data from Flightradar24. Images posted to social media showed a sickening scene, with the plane’s nose ripped off and a mangled wreck of wiring and metal spilling down from a hole in the fuselage.
Thirty-two of the 41 people injured in the accident had been released from hospital by Monday evening, while several remained in serious condition. In all, there were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard.
Preliminary information suggests that a controller in the airport tower cleared the truck to cross the runway and respond to another incident involving a United Airlines jet. Realizing his misjudgment, he then told the truck to stop but it didn’t.
One passenger told reporters the flight had been smooth until the descent. She and another passenger described hearing an intense grinding noise as the pilot braked hard to try to slow the plane after touchdown.
In audio recorded Sunday night, a voice could be heard telling a vehicle multiple times to 'stop.'
The Associated Press
“It may have been that once the fire truck turned onto the runway, the collision was virtually inevitable,” said Alan Diehl, a pilot and former aircraft design engineer who also investigated crashes for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. Both the plane and the truck are heavy vehicles that don’t stop on a dime and poor visibility might also have played a role, he said.
“They were probably very focused on getting the aircraft on the ground and may have not have noticed the truck moving at all,” Mr. Diehl said of the pilots. “They wouldn’t be expecting it to cross.”
Despite the lives lost, the outcome of the crash could have been worse, experts said. The aircraft’s main fuel tanks, located on the wings and belly, weren’t touched and so there was no fire, which would have escalated things and led to a much more calamitous situation, they noted.
Passenger Joe Capio recounts his experience after the crash.
Reuters
The bulk of the damage was done to the plane’s front end, and the consequence was severe.
Unlike cars, which feature bumpers and airbags, aircraft are not designed for collision, but rather to maintain comfortable air pressure inside the cabin while flying at high altitudes. Planes have a fairly thin skin made from lightweight composite materials, and their safety features are largely geared toward avoiding impacts.
Mehran Ebrahimi, an aerospace specialist at the University of Quebec at Montreal, said the CRJ has an additional quirk in that it has a lower-profile front end than many other aircraft. That’s in part so it can use its built-in stair doors for boarding at smaller airports.
“The pilots would have been very exposed in this situation,” Mr. Ebrahimi said.