Air Canada’s Flight 8646 to LaGuardia: From routine landing to disaster in 20 seconds

NEW YORK – It took 20 seconds for a routine landing at LaGuardia Airport on March 22 to devolve into a fatal disaster.

Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was about 30m above the ground when an air traffic controller gave permission for a fire truck to cross LaGuardia’s Runway No. 4.

Eleven seconds later, a controller in the LaGuardia tower started yelling over the radio at the fire truck’s driver to stop immediately, Mr Doug Brazy, a senior aviation accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference on March 24.

One second after that, the plane touched down on the runway, he said.

Three seconds later, the captain assumed control of the plane from the first officer. The jet rolled on the tarmac for another seven seconds, braking hard. Then the two vehicles collided, the nose of the plane imploding, the fire truck flipping on its side, debris spraying across the tarmac.

Both pilots died; both firefighters were injured but survived.

More than 40 hours after the disaster, many facts remained unknown, Ms Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said, including what exactly caused the cascade of failures that ended in two deaths and injured dozens of people.

Officials are investigating whether the crash stemmed from problems with staffing, vehicle tracking technology, communication systems, human judgment or a combination of the factors.

In her comments on March 24, Ms Homendy focused on several areas of concern for safety investigators. The jet struck a fire truck that was not equipped with a transponder, she said. Emergency vehicles at other airports around the country tend to have transponders, which allow air traffic controllers to monitor the vehicles’ positions, she said.

LaGuardia is equipped with a surveillance system that allows controllers to track the movement of planes and vehicles on the ground and gives audible and visual warnings of possible incursions on runways. Those alarms did not trigger before the crash, Ms Homendy said.

Investigators do not know whether the firefighters in the truck heard the tower’s command to stop driving forward, she said.

There were two air traffic controllers in the LaGuardia tower at the time of the crash, Ms Homendy said. Standard procedure at LaGuardia calls for two controllers to work the overnight shift.

The pilots of the plane were identified on March 24 as Mr Antoine Forest and Mr Mackenzie Gunther, both from Canada. NYTIMES