Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at LaGuardia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy01g522ww4o

by mememememememo • 4 months ago

429 629 4 months ago

bbc.com

https://avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e

spwa4• 4 months ago

According to other news sources, the pilots lost their lives here, too.

azalemeth• 4 months ago

The entire cockpit, front toilet and galley area, and probably a front row seat have all been utterly destroyed. Unfortunately I'd be amazed if the death toll stays at two.

weird-eye-issue3• 4 months ago

How did it end up like that with the nose up: what is holding it up?

cschmatzler• 4 months ago

Front fell off, people deplaned (while still horizontal) which shifted the balance backwards. It’s sitting on the rear bulkhead,

weird-eye-issue3• 4 months ago

I guess there is more weight in the relatively small section of the front that came off than I expected

Reason077• 4 months ago

Gravity. The aircraft is heavier at the back, where the engines are. With the nose severely damaged/missing, the centre of gravity has shifted aft, so what’s left of the nose is sticking up in the air.

bilekas2• 4 months ago

That's a huge amount of damage even at 24mph. It's crazy how that could happen though. Will be interesting to see the full report.

whycome6• 4 months ago

Very unlikely it was 24mph…The entire cockpit is gone.

(Though some of the major damage may have happened while deplaning the passengers)

Ekaros• 4 months ago

On other hand planes are really not designed to be crashed into things. Only for limited impacts. So we might not have right comparison for relatively thin and aimed to be light structure being impacted by bulkier object.

hiddendoom45• 4 months ago

It looks like that is based on the last recorded speed from flightradar24[1] which was 21kts(24mph). The previous data points were 11kts, and 58 kts(the last point before the track deviates off the runway). I do think it is likely that the collision occurred at a speed faster than 24mph.

edit: Looking into this a bit more it looks like the plane came to a stop around crossing E while the emergency vehicle was crossing at D(based on ATC recordings). Using the following map as reference[2], the 58kts point was around E, while the previous recorded point which was just before D was 114kts.

[1] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ac8646#3ede6c39

[2] https://www.flightaware.com/resources/airport/LGA/APD/AIRPOR...

masklinn3• 4 months ago

The fire truck was flipped and moved to the side of the runway, this was not 24mph. 24mph is the final groundspeed recorded after the aircraft skidded off of the runway.

Per the ADSBx track the plane was at 101kts (115 mph / 185kph) just before crossing taxiway D, which would be where it hit the firetruck. It still had enough energy afterwards to reach taxiway E, 600ft away.

bilekas2• 4 months ago

Okay that makes far more sense the article didn’t really make that clear to me.

cucumber37328425• 4 months ago

The results seem on the high end but they check out at first glance.

A plane is basically a flimsy tube. A firetruck is a solid brick comparatively. The plane out weighs the fire truck by a lot and out speeds it by a lot. So yeah, destroying the whole front of the plane to punt the truck it sounds about right for a 25 on 5 or 35 on 10/15 type rear ending to me. Flipping doesn't really sound that unreasonable considering that the plane made contact with the top of the truck (just by virtue of comparative height) and contact may not have been straight on. Even if it left the pavement on it's wheels airport firefighters aren't exactly who I'd bet on (they're middle of the pack) to keep the truck on it's wheels if they got surprise kicked off the road especially if there's an embankment involved.

globular-toast• 4 months ago

Speed doesn't cause damage. Momentum causes damage. We understand speed, we do not understand momentum. It makes sense given our evolution.

People into boats need to understand this. Even a boat that travels no more than 4mph can crush you easily. This is why you never get on to moving boat from the front. Many people have made a mistake because speed is not high.

cucumber37328425• 4 months ago

Tugboats bump other boats all day. Hundred thousand pound pieces of machinery bury themselves into the dirt. All this as part of normal operation. It's not that simple.

Speed, kinetic energy and acceleration are all interrelated and at the end of the day it's all forces (to some extent) and no amount of hand wringing commentary is going to replace genuine understanding of them.

throw0101c3• 4 months ago

That's a huge amount of damage even at 24mph.

The speed was much higher per sibling comment, but also remember that kinetic energy also involves mass (planes are heavy) and the square of the velocity.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy

The latter is why (e.g.) going 100 units/hour has twice the KE of going 70 units/hour in a car.

mcbain• 4 months ago

https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e

Captain and first officer are reported to have died in the accident, two fire fighters on board of the truck received serious injuries, 13 passengers received injuries.

xyst• 4 months ago

Yet another blow to the confidence of flying in this country.

trvz• 4 months ago

More accurately, the risk has increased by at least one order of magnitude, but the confidence of the public has largely stayed the same.

itsmek• 4 months ago

Source for the risk going up by 10x? Wild claim

calf• 4 months ago

This comes to mind how during the Boeing news scandals, commenters would confidently argue "Flying is still ridiculously safe, statistically speaking", "these things happen every day, just underreported", and "you/people are irrational for not flying Boeing". It's a very curious argument to me. Is the ATC infrastructure issue analogous or not, etc.

actionfromafar• 4 months ago

It is strange. What is importa t is, are things getting better or getting worse? As they say, it’s not the fall that kills, bit the impact. Are we falling?

kakacik• 4 months ago

Maybe US media, hardly an unbiased news source about US events, especially when hundreds of billions are flying around about incompetent massive employer and lobbyist.

Nowhere else in the world you would hear such statements. Boeings simply disappeared from Europe, those few that were here before. I am sure they are still used somewhere but I haven't flown any in past 7-8 years. Heck, I haven't seen any in South east Asia neither (but that may be due to luck).

I check this with all bookings, no way I am flying that piece of shit if I can anyhow avoid that, not alone and quadruple that with family.

LaffertyDev• 4 months ago

You can view the actual data and control for your own recency bias one way or the other. I see data from 2005 - 2024 trivially accessible.

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/Pages/research.aspx

mememememememo8• 4 months ago

You can have both. I.e. complain about safety breaches, push to get back on track safety wise, but still decide to fly as it is safe enough. Guess it is being practical.

heraldgeezer5• 4 months ago

Grok how many people die on their commute to work in their deathtrap cars

Grok timed out but here is perplexity

Per 100 million miles traveled

    Car driving: ~0.57 deaths per 100 million miles (recent U.S. data).

    Commercial air travel: ~0.003 deaths per 100 million miles.

This means driving has roughly 190 times the fatality rate per mile as commercial flying in the U.S.

umm u should never drive again. in fact never leave your apartment/house.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

You're not going to die in a car crash.

You're going to die of heart disease caused by your poor diet.

You should never eat again. No, wait, stop, I mean...

twalichiewicz• 4 months ago

Was curious if ground vehicles at airports also use transponders to communicate position to the radio tower, and it turns out the FAA put out a report last year on potential solutions to avoid this exact situation:

https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/certalerts/part_...

altmanaltman• 4 months ago

LaGuardia has that system, it still failed to prevent this

cucumber37328425• 4 months ago

Transponder doesn't alter the laws of physics for the landing plane you just cut off. I guess it gives ATC a ~5sec jump on telling some other flight to go around.

I'd bet a lot of money that however the system is implemented the police and fire get special treatment when it comes to process (i.e. asking permission before they go somewhere planes might be) and that is part of what lead to this.

fsh• 4 months ago

Many airports have ADS-B transponders in their ground vehicles. You can see them on flightradar or adsbexchange.

zX41ZdbW• 4 months ago

Ground vehicles with transponders: https://adsb.exposed/?dataset=Planes&zoom=7&lat=42.1262&lng=...

ViewTrick1002• 4 months ago

Or just do like the rest of the world. No anticipated clearences to land, you only ever get a clerance when the runway is empty and yours.

mememememememo8• 4 months ago

Yeah that gut wrenched ATC had to stay on point and ensure the next plane to land did a go around. Scary stuff.

Us lot have more people doing SRE ensuring p99 10ms for something frankly way less important. It is a nuts world.

naberhausj2• 4 months ago

I think this is a good idea.

The only negative I can think of is that it will generally involve accepting and responding to clearances on short final. I think adding more tasks to that critical stage of flight probably increases danger a little. Especially for low time student pilots like myself. That's particularly relevant in the U.S. because we have a higher percentage of student and private pilots than most of the world.

Overall, though, I'm fully convinced this would be safer.

bombcar11• 4 months ago

Even without anticipated clearance to land you have to define what "the runway is empty and yours" means.

throw0101c3• 4 months ago

Was curious if ground vehicles at airports also use transponders to communicate position […]

They do at CYYZ (Toronto Pearson):

* https://www.flightradar24.com/43.68,-79.63/13 (zoomed in)

* https://www.flightradar24.com/airport/yyz

Also at CYUL (Montreal Trudeau) and CYVR (Vancouver International).

hajile7• 4 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Kqg6sokz4

Truck declared it was crossing. ATC told it to stop. Truck didn't stop.

This wasn't a communication issue.

cpncrunch5• 4 months ago

He asked Frontier 4195 to stop. By the time he asked truck 1 to stop they were entering the runway.

oskarkk• 4 months ago

Audio in this video is cut, with parts of the recording omitted, see here for the full recording: https://youtu.be/Pbm-QJAAzNY?si=4Kkd8t8VEAsgHmJv&t=149

Timestamps from the video:

2:46 Truck requests crossing

2:51 ATC allows it to cross

2:53 Truck confirms

2:58 ATC: "Frontier 4195 stop there please"

3:02 ATC: "stop stop stop stop truck one stop stop stop"

3:15 ATC: "tower, truck one, stop, ..."

Crash probably a couple seconds later, wouldn't rely on the video for the exact timing.

So it seems that ATC made an error by allowing the truck to cross, and then the order to stop wasn't communicated clearly enough. I wouldn't place much blame on the truck.

Edit: Looking at some other videos with that audio, I'm also not sure if the video I linked represents the time between communications correctly, transmission at 3:15 may have been right after the one at 3:02. Anyway, the best thing is to wait for the investigation.

haunter• 4 months ago

I saw the first post about this on /r/flying and /r/aviation 5 hours ago and legacy media is only started reporting it in the last hour or so

whycome6• 4 months ago

And so much of the legacy media info is wrong. It’s strange because a lot of the primary sources are public.

This is a good overview so far:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8vokLcNNGCM

quotemstr• 4 months ago

It's hardly worth checking with the legacy media anymore. Really, why bother?

Symbiote• 4 months ago

And so much of the legacy media info is wrong. It’s strange because a lot of the primary sources are public.

You should provide sources for a claim like that. For example, what in the BBC article is wrong?

raphlinus• 4 months ago

Very informative, thanks for the link!

ATC audio is https://archive.liveatc.net/klga/KLGA-Twr-Mar-23-2026-0330Z....

The clearance for AC8646 to land on runway 4 is given in a sequence starting at 4:58. "Vehicle needs to cross the runway" at 6:43. Truck 1 and company asks for clearance to cross 4 at 6:53. Clearance is granted at 7:00. Then ATC asks both a Frontier and Truck 1 to stop, voice is hurried and it's confusing.

donohoe2• 4 months ago

Typically most primary sources are public.

tchalla• 4 months ago

I have seen a lot of first posts on social media which have been wrong

chris_money2022• 4 months ago

Is this a dig on legacy media? Do we expect people to be up all hours of the day reporting the news?

AnimalMuppet• 4 months ago

Yes. Yes, we do. I expect a competent news agency to have a night desk.

organsnyder3• 4 months ago

I got a NYT alert about this around 3:30am EDT.

mememememememo8• 4 months ago

/r/xyz doesnt need to fact check. Sure those are excellent subs but just being watering holes and not legal entities they can move faster. There were some wrong facts on r/aviation although it got viral so people just ploughed in with whatever news outlet they read it on.

donohoe2• 4 months ago

Nope.

CNN, CNBC, NYPost, Guardian all had stories up quickly, or around an hour. There are others too.

UPDATED:

Down-votes happen but disappointing since I'm stating facts. Heres some backup:

The user haunter said media started reporting around ~4 AM EST (based on timestamps).

The accident happened at 11:40 PM EST. Story publish times across a sample of various legacy/mainstream media orgs:

  CNN - 12:47 AM
  NYPost - 12:47 AM
  The Guardian - 12:50 AM
  Associated Press (AP) - 1:31 AM
  Fox News - 1:47 AM
  Newsweek - 2:24 AM

There are others.

metalman• 4 months ago

It should be noted that aircraft and all other vehicle and personel movements on an airport are controlled from the airtraffic control tower by air traffic controllers or directly by individual flaggers, as directed from the tower. Or at least thats the way it is supposed to work, and of course the operation at a place like LaGuardia is more complex, and will have specialists and multiple zones. What will put an extra edge on this is the whole ICE thing, and airport chaos pulling the roof down.

lotsofpulp2• 4 months ago

The comments in /r/aviation see to think it’s a one (tired) man show at night.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1s16x61/comment/o...

rdtsc2• 4 months ago

What will put an extra edge on this is the whole ICE thing, and airport chaos pulling the roof down.

How would the ICE thing cause more ground traffic collisions. Are you thinking ATC controllers are illegal immigrants and they’re going to run away during their shift? I just don’t see a connection there…

wat100009• 4 months ago

Not the crash, but the aftermath. Passengers will be showing up for flights today, nervous with the crash on their minds, and many will then encounter untrained goons cosplaying as airport security.

tencentshill• 4 months ago

This incident caused delays and cancellations that ripple throughout an already understaffed network of TSA checkpoints. ICE presence will make airport security somehow an even worse experience for brown people.

bigfatkitten• 4 months ago

I’d hazard a guess that the speed of impact was much more than 24mph, seeing how the nose of the aircraft was obliterated.

jleyank• 4 months ago

Aircraft, remember, are aluminum balloons with wings. Hit something solid, particularly if filled with incompressible fluid, is a bad day. People f*ck up, people die.

cpncrunch5• 4 months ago

114kts. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/568287

keithfawcett• 4 months ago

What a terrible tragedy.

aurareturn2• 4 months ago

Is it just me or am I noticing more and more aviation accidents in the last 5 or 6 years? More than the 2010s.

__patchbit__• 4 months ago

Easily fixed by SpaceXai ground control autonomy.

user_78323• 4 months ago

It's definitely a thing. I've been an aviation nerd for years and in the past you'd just have one bizzare event here and there. The last "big" ones were MH370 and MH17, but we've had fatal commerical aviation accidents very frequent of late.

aurareturn2• 4 months ago

Why do you think that is?

More air traffic? Busier airports? More travelers? More flights in general? Overworked/understaffed positions?

jacquesm5• 4 months ago

MH17 was not an accident.

pseingatl• 4 months ago

Fortunately, personnel from Morgan & Morgan™, America's largest billboard personal injury law firm, are rushing to the airfield to investigate the accident, take statements and offer their services to the injured to insure that they are properly compensated. "The way we plea, there is no fee."

cmiles82• 4 months ago

Emergency vehicles were en route to another emergency in progress on the other runway. Sadly it sounds like a fire truck was cleared to cross the active runway moments before the CRJ landed. By the time the controller realized that mistake it was too late.

_moof10• 4 months ago

I'm very, very curious about whether the ARFF crew visually cleared the runway and final before crossing the hold short line. It's standard procedure for flight crew to do this, specifically to mitigate the risk of ATC errors.

PierceJoy• 4 months ago

I mean, isn't it obvious that they didn't?

bombcar11• 4 months ago

At night with multiple runways it can be very hard to see a plane on final.

Still, I'm always hesitant to cross an active runway.

gortok• 4 months ago

Reports are there were fog and rain at La Guardia at the time of the incident. They were on a short final, and it’s entirely possible they were not visible to the fire truck’s crew.

cmiles82• 4 months ago

Yes ARFF should still look before crossing, but the weather wasn’t great with limited visibility and thus even if they looked it’s possible they didn’t see anything.

arrowsmith2• 4 months ago

Do we know what the other emergency was? All the reporting I've seen has been very vague on this.

ms7m• 4 months ago

Unrelated United aborted takeoff, as well as reported some odors in the cabin from the flight attendants.

kayodelycaon• 4 months ago

United aircraft did a high speed abort (80+ knots) and afterwards, fumes from hot brakes were entering the back of the cabin. (Not uncommon.)

Source: Mentour Pilot. https://www.youtube.com/live/Bb4CcoK0KLM

hajile7• 4 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Kqg6sokz4

The truck asks permission to cross. It is given. The truck declares it is going to cross, but the ATC replies "just stop there please".

Also, those runway entry lights look red to me. If so, that should have been a HUGE warning sign to the driver.

cpncrunch5• 4 months ago

He said "Frontier 4195 stop there please". Then "stop stop stop stop truckon" By the time he clearly tells "truck 1" to stop, they're already entering the runway. Sounds like a bit of confusion.

stergios• 4 months ago

It was the “truck and company” that was cleared to cross. That’s probably 5+ vehicles you can see following the lead truck that were all approved. All while the jet was on short final. That controller lost situational awareness due to task saturation as a result of emergency aircraft on taxiway parallel to runway 13.

cjrp2• 4 months ago

ATC recording on https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php Fire truck was cleared to cross and then told to stop. I'm not sure if they were the only controller working at the time, they continued working after the incident which seems unusual; my understanding is normally they'd be relieved by another controller.

brownieeee• 4 months ago

They were indeed the only controller, working both ground and tower frequencies.

the_mitsuhiko• 4 months ago

Which, as a non informed person but someone who needs to travel by plane, sounds absolutely insane. Was it always possible to staff that with a single person or is that a result of understaffing?

hajile7• 4 months ago

Only one ATC isn't the issue here.

The emergency vehicle was told to stop and did not. Even a dozen ATC wouldn't have helped in that case.

caditinpiscinam3• 4 months ago

That seems like too much for a single person to do, but I can also see how having too many controllers all trying to coordinate amongst themselves could be bad. How do airports determine the optimal number of controllers to have at a given time?

mmooss• 4 months ago

There were two controllers working (and two more in the building):

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/nyregion/faa-air-traffic-...

embedding-shape• 4 months ago

I'm not sure if they were the only controller working at the time, they continued working after the incident which seems unusual; my understanding is normally they'd be relieved by another controller

I remember late last year, couple of months ago, US ATC controllers were without pay but forced to work anyways (similar to TSA I suppose, although I don't think they were forced, but volunteered to work without salary), is that still the situation? Couldn't find any updates about that the situation been resolved, nor any updates that it's ongoing, if so though it feels like it'd be related to the amount of available controllers.

tialaramex• 4 months ago

The US has had trouble keeping enough controllers. It's a skilled but extremely stressful job, and so retention would always be difficult but the US also works hard to make it suck more than it should, and of course the over-work from not having enough people makes that even worse.

But no, AIUI only things that were somehow deemed part of "Homeland Security" are frozen, the TSA are part of Homeland Security but the ATC are under the FAA. So this particular partial government funding lapse wasn't causal, at least directly.

nradov11• 4 months ago

ATCs weren't exactly forced to work: they aren't slaves and are free to quit any time. But if they didn't show up for assigned shifts even though they weren't getting paid then they were subject to disciplinary action including termination. Some of them called in sick, or took on temporary second jobs to bring in some cash (obviously a bad thing from a fatigue management standpoint). After the government shutdown they were paid in arrears for all of the hours they worked. It's crazy that Congress plays political games with essential services like ATC.

FuriouslyAdrift• 4 months ago

The budget was signed Feb 3 this year to fund most of the govt (excepting DHS) through September 2026. ATC were not paid from Sept 30, 2025 until Feb 4, 2026. They receive back pay. They are also supposed to get a raise and funds set aside to hire 2500 more ATC but that is currently held up in the DHS funding fight.

It's a mess.

oncallthrow• 4 months ago

I’m always staggered by how stressed and tbh (not necessarily their fault given the circumstances) unprofessional US ATCs sound.

Sharp contrast with Europeans

f1shy6• 4 months ago

In Europe is illegal to capture and publish ATC. I don't understand why. Anyway I do not know what are you comparing.

From pilot friends, in best case I would say a big “depends” in some countries are very unprofessional, in others very professional (anyway total unfair generalization). There were already accidents because of that, for example because the twr communicated with locals in non english, so not everybody was at the same page.

floatrock• 4 months ago

Utterly unqualified to suggest any causes (wait for the NTSB report on that), but couple compounding factors I've read elsewhere to begin to understand the situation and context:

- Another plane was out of position, grabbing some attention of the controller

- Stop communication was ambiguous about whether talking to previous plane or firetruck

- The colliding plane didn't have "explicit" landing clearance, but a "follow previous plane and land the same way unless told otherwise" implicit landing clearance. In Europe, planes need an explicit landing clearance, the act of granting it may have brought attention to the runway contention. US implicit system (arguably) is a bit more efficient, debate will now be is it worth it (pilots are now required to read back instructions because of past blood... will this result in same thing?)

- This was around midnight and apparently a little foggy, making visual contacts harder

Remember folks, disasters like this are rarely caused by a single factor. NTSB reports are excellent post-mortems that look at all contributing factors and analyze how they compounded into failure. Be human here.

nradov11• 4 months ago

In the USA at controlled airports, aircraft also need explicit landing clearance.

"Jazz 646, number 2, cleared to land 4."

https://youtu.be/Pbm-QJAAzNY?si=h3VEuVNLMf9Z8D1c&t=126

f1shy6• 4 months ago

They did have a very explicit clearance.

The controller said “truck 1 stop” that is not ambiguous.

HDThoreaun2• 4 months ago

Stop communication was ambiguous about whether talking to previous plane or firetruck

"stop stop stop, truck 1 stop stop stop" I mean maybe it was ambiguous for half a second but he pretty quickly said "truck 1 stop". I guess we'll have to wait for the sync up to see if it was too late to stop by then

IAmBroom• 4 months ago

"I visited them both in the hospital, as has the chairman, and they were able to speak and we're notifying their families," said Garcia.

Let's get the important parts out of the way first: We in charge have taken care of optics, with regard to our offices.

Oh, and we're going to contact families eventually.

newsclues• 4 months ago

https://x.com/thenewarea51/status/2035926457394876837

ATC audio

make a mistake, recognize it, and then have to continue on your job, knowing you likely just killed people, because if you don't others will die.

The weight of some jobs is immense, and our civilization relies upon workers to shoulder the burden everyday.

wat100009• 4 months ago

And these guys are tremendously overworked because the government can’t get its shit together to hire enough people to staff at appropriate levels.

callmeal3• 4 months ago

"Government"? Let's call it what it is. ITYM "Republicans".

exabrial2• 4 months ago

Another option: they shouldn't be government employees at all. It would be much better for them to work for the actual airports themselves and be certified by the government or a private testing organization instead.

curiousgal• 4 months ago

our civilization relies upon workers to shoulder the burden everyday.

Our civilization? Nah. Just that one shithole country. Greatest country in the world and they schedule a single guy to work both tower and ground frequencies at a major airport, it's almost like they're asking for this shit to happen.

And before anyone mentions understaffing, this literally one of the plethora of problems that the rest of the world figured out while the U.S. continues to act special.

OsrsNeedsf2P• 4 months ago

He asked the truck to stop multiple times. That's got to be so stressful and annoying - knowing you asked the truck to stop, but for whatever reason the command wasn't received.

HDThoreaun2• 4 months ago

We dont know the timing. He may have issued the stop command as the crash was occuring

kimos• 4 months ago

There was 7 seconds between clearance being given and the accident.

freediver• 4 months ago

So sad to hear this. Heartbroken.

renewiltord8• 4 months ago

Are the increased number of air incidents since Dec 2024 reflective of anything real or is it more attention on something? Brigida v. USDOT comes to mind but doesn't seem relevant. I'm sure we could all construct a chain of "this thing happened that caused that which caused this" and so on, but I'm curious if someone has done the effort to see whether such a chain is defensible.

Also, did the pilots die in the collision or in some sort of aftermath? The cockpit looks absolutely smashed.

ryandrake7• 4 months ago

You can probably construct a realistic chain of failure that goes all the way back to political tomfoolery and bad air traffic control leadership/staffing decisions, but that makes the wrong people look bad, so they'll probably blame individuals further down the totem pole like the controller or pilot and call it a day.

renewiltord8• 4 months ago

Ah so you think it is Brigida. I get what you mean. I had to obscure that in order to ask the question.

naberhausj2• 4 months ago

I am not aware of any data that supports the claim that there are more incidents in recent history. The safest years were, of course, the COVID-19 shutdown years, when air-travel was greatly reduced. But besides that the last couple of years has been overall safer than the years before COVID-19.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_inciden...

The 2025 crash near DCA, of course, absolutely spiked the number of recent commercial aviation deaths, but we haven't had any other aviation tragedies of that magnitude in more than a decade.

This can be a preventable tragedy without there needing to be a conspiracy behind it.

renewiltord8• 4 months ago

Not a conspiracy. A mistake. E.g. no one wanted the screwworm fly to invade NA. It was a result of factory shutdowns. That kind of ultimate cause was what I was curious about.

Your link is global not American which wouldn’t really show the effect if it was a change in US policy. But Googling you’re right, the premise is wrong.

https://www.ntsb.gov/pages/monthly.aspx

shrx4• 4 months ago

I'm curious about what kind of visualization does the ATC have at the disposal about the current occupancy of the individual tarmac segments? I'd assume if an airplane is approaching for landing on a specific runway, that runway should have been clearly marked as restricted for access until the plane would actually land and clear it?

cjrp2• 4 months ago

In the US, airplanes can be cleared for landing while the runway is occupied (you can be number two, three, etc. for landing and still be cleared). It's different in other countries, where you can only be issued a landing clearance if the runway is clear or anticipated to be clear before you land (e.g. the plane before you is already exiting the runway).

shrx4• 4 months ago

Still, the runway could be reserved for landing aircrafts only, still preventing access to all other types of vehicles.

ApolloFortyNine7• 4 months ago

In 2026, with how much money their is in aviation, it seems wild to not have digitized this ages ago. The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances.

That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. And there's pretty much no way to make ATC's job not stressful, its inherently stressful. Taking out how much of their job is held in the current operators mind versus being 'committed' seems like low hanging fruit 30 years ago.

The whole system's just begging for human error to occur. There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs.

bronco210164• 4 months ago

The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances.

It does, the Runway Status Lights System uses radar to identify when the runway is in use and shows a solid bright red bar at every entrance to the runway. I'm curious what the NTSB has to say about it for this incident. From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though.

bombcar11• 4 months ago

Emergency vehicles almost always can override/ignore warning devices (think firetrucks running red lights) which can cause "fun" for some value of "death/dismemberment/vehicle loss".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xf7aU5Udo

deathanatos3• 4 months ago

From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though.

Just to add…

The vehicle in question got clearance from ATC to cross the runway. ATC revoked it shortly afterwards (by radioing "Tower, Truck 1. Stop truck 1. Stop! Stop Truck 1, STOP!" (followed by the incident; the next transmission is go-arounds.)); presumably, ATC realized the impending danger. I am assuming that requesting permission from ATC to enter a runway in an emergency is a permitted action, so RWSL aren't going to prevent this type of incident.

I don't think we know why Truck 1 did not heed the stop warning (e.g., if it came too later, got lost, etc.), but I am thinking that if they understood the indication from the RWSL, they overrode it by getting clearance, because they needed to cross the runway due to the (first) emergency.

So, same. Will be curious to see what NTSB says. I suspect something about resource management: there seems to be too much happening, too quickly, for that one ATC controller. While perhaps the controller makes mistakes, the mistakes appear to my untrained ear as "reasonable", and I'd like the system to be such that reasonable mistakes don't cost lives.

fnordfnordfnord• 4 months ago

Video has been released showing that the REL's were operational at LaGuardia during the crash. It isn't definitive that the REL's that are facing the fire truck's view are working but they will have video and we will know soon.

Tweet showing the video of the collision:

https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/2036131991792550351?s=20

Here is a diagram showing their locations.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/LGA.pd...

thomas_witt• 4 months ago

How would you exactly "digitize"? While that sounds like a nice idea in theory it's the same as "digitizing" road traffic.

In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates.

I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation.

ApolloFortyNine7• 4 months ago

In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates.

1700 incursions a year, and other articles mentioning multiple near misses a week at a single airport [1]. It is safe in practice, likely largely due to the pilots here also being heavily trained and looking for mistakes, but it seems a lot like rolling the dice for a bad day.

I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation.

I didn't say it'd be free. Just hard to believe radio voice communication is the best way to go.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airl...

njovin• 4 months ago

The Runway Status Light system already does this via automated monitoring of traffic from multiple systems: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl

I'm sure the NTSB report will cover why this didn't stop the accident. Presumably either the system wasn't working as-expected, or the fire truck proceeded despite the warning lights since they had clearance from the controller.

The system is only advisory at present, so if the truck did see a warning light and proceeded anyway, they were technically permitted to do so.

coryrc• 4 months ago

While that sounds like a nice idea in theory it's the same as "digitizing" road traffic.

Traffic lights instead of mad max intersections are better.

Then there's subway Automatic Train Control.

I don't know that Air Traffic Control staff don't have computer systems for establishing which plane owns what airspace. They at least did do it manually already following specific processes, so it can be at least augmented and a computer can check for conflicts automatically (if it isn't already). And, sure, ATC could still use radio, but there could be a digital standard for ensuring everybody has access to all local airspace data. Or maybe that wouldn't help.

Your ground vehicle wanting to cross a runway could have the driver punch "cross runway 5" button (cross-referenced with GPS) and try to grab an immediate 30 second mutex on it. The computer can check that the runway is not allocated in that time (i.e. it could be allocated 2 minutes in the future, and that would be fine).

But, as pointed out elsewhere, obviously some of this is already present: stop lights are supposed to be present at this intersection.

throwway1203854• 4 months ago

I'm sure they've started all of this a few times over the past decade. The problem is in the US if you can't start and finish a project like that in less than 2 years then it's effectively dead in the water. The last time we "modernized" ATC was closer to the 90's than today, when there was still some general political will to make our government agencies modern instead of tearing them to pieces.

PunchyHamster6• 4 months ago

It's already digitized, he's clueless. The ATC knows where vehicle was and where the plane is going, it looks as simple case of mistake or maybe not watertight enough procedures

smallerize2• 4 months ago

The BBB allocated $12B for ATC modernization. https://www.faa.gov/new-atcs

Money isn't the only reason it's so old. The coordination problems are huge. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/us_air_traffic_contro...

throw0101c3• 4 months ago

There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs.

How many runways crossings are there in a year? How much is "1700+" a percentage of that total?

bombcar11• 4 months ago

The point is that it doesn't matter what percentage of the total they are, it's that 1 is too high without adequate explanation (the Gimli Glider caused vehicles to be guilty of a runway incursion by turning an abandoned runway into an active one, for example).

And the cost of investigating 1,700 should be within the budget.

dpe82• 4 months ago

My very fuzzy back of the envelope says easily 10s of thousands per day.

snitty• 4 months ago

A "runway incursion" is a very broad term that includes everything from this accident to a single engine Cessna moving past the hold short line prematurely at a quiet airport.

FAA defines it as "Any occurrence at an aerodrome involving the incorrect presence of an aircraft, vehicle or person on the protected area of a surface designated for the landing and take off of aircraft." [0]

Many runway incursions run no risk of any accident, but are still flagged as issues, investigated, and punished if appropriate.

[0] https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/runway_...

dpark10• 4 months ago

Air traffic (and ground traffic) control are not simple problems. La Guardia has 350k aircraft operations (takeoffs and landings) every year. 1000/day. Peak traffic is almost certainly more than 1 plane every minute. Runways are always in use and the idea that some simple software will solve all the safety problems is not grounded in reality.

mvdtnz• 4 months ago

No one said it was simple. You're tilting at windmills.

infinitewars2• 4 months ago

more than 1 plane every minute

Software routinely solves database coordination problems with millions of users per second.

PieTime• 4 months ago

This isn’t hypothetical, this system just exists in other countries. Digital systems can confirm flight instruction from ATC with zero radio communication.

felipellrocha• 4 months ago

Hehehehe, grounded.

amomchilov• 4 months ago

That makes digitization even more important, you sold me.

zenoprax3• 4 months ago

That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point.

Voice communication is insane? I suspect you are ignorant of what it is like to actually fly a large aircraft into a busy airport. Fault-tolerant and highly available hardware must facilitate low-latency, single-threaded communication with high semantic density in order to achieve multi-dimensional consensus in a safety-critical, heterogeneous, adversarial environment.

There is some interesting research that captures this sentiment and shows how complex a solution might need to be (replace "faulty agent" with "human error"): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00051...

ianburrell• 4 months ago

Voice communication has the advantage is that it can be used without taking off hands and attention off controls. Digital solution would require using device.

lxgr2• 4 months ago

Listening to some recent close call ATC tapes, yes, it seems absolutely insane to manage current traffic levels with the existing number of controllers over voice.

I don't doubt that it's a very safe system with enough slack allowing for intentional redundancy. But as it is, some of these controllers seem to be limited by their ability to pronounce instructions, leaving absolutely no margin for error and presumably very little room for conscious thought.

jorvi• 4 months ago

HN has recently banned AI written / edited comments. Be better.

glitchc4• 4 months ago

You seem to be giving too much credit to the singleton design pattern. We know exactly how well that works on a modern, multi-tasking, preemptible operating system (hint: not well at all).

throw0101d6• 4 months ago

That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point.

There is digital comms with ATC without voice:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller–pilot_data_link_com...

* https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/DataComm

But in the highly dynamic environment of final approach, landing, and taxiing, I doubt it would be practical. Unless we want to try autonomous 'driving' on taxiways and runways?

PunchyHamster6• 4 months ago

There are systems for it, just not really integrated into emergencies and ground vehicles. Mistakes also happen even if all info required to avoid is present

matthewkayin3• 4 months ago

While modernizing ATC in the US may be overdue, the real issue here is that ATC in the US has been understaffed, underpaid, and overworked for a while now.

My father works ATC and his schedule has him working overtime, 6 shifts a week, including overnight shifts, meaning that there is literally not a day of the week where he doesn't spend at least some time in the tower.

If that's the reality for even half of the controllers, it's no surprise that we've been seeing more and more traffic accidents lately.

doctorpangloss2• 4 months ago

Why do so many jobs have this failure mode? Thinking about this should illuminate for you that funding is not the whole story.

bikelang• 4 months ago

Seems like everyone, everywhere is overworked, underpaid, and under supported. How much longer can we frogs survive the boiling?

aeternum5• 4 months ago

No that is not the issue. Runway incursions have always been a problem and many deaths have occurred.

There have been many attempts to change phraseology, teach pilots and controllers to always readback runways, etc. but nothing that actually prevents the issue from occurring entirely via automation.

thefounder2• 4 months ago

Can’t this whole thing being automated and let only special/unexpected situations being handled by humans ?

hajile7• 4 months ago

Overwork is an issue in general, but I don't know that it was the actual issue here.

In audio from the air traffic control tower at LaGuardia, a staff member can be heard saying: "'Truck One, stop, stop, stop!" in the seconds before the crash.

It sounds to me like either the Cop or the Firefighter (whichever was driving) wasn't listening to ATC and this whole incident was probably completely avoidable.

EDIT: a video of the crash seems to have warning lights that the emergency vehicle ignored.

rahimnathwani2• 4 months ago

Don't air traffic controllers get paid at a higher rate for overtime than for their 'regular hours'?

If so, doesn't the understaffing (lower # of employees) result in each employee being overpaid (paid a higher hourly rate)?

EDIT: And it seems like air traffic controllers can retire after just 20 years and draw a defined benefit pension: https://www.faa.gov/nyc-atc

urbandw311er• 4 months ago

Why are we discussing the issue being ATC workers when the recordings make it clear that they had identified the issue and ordered the vehicle to stop? Sound like the issue is whoever was driving the truck not doing what was asked of them for whatever reason. Unless of course it was equipment failure.

zeristor• 4 months ago

Wouldn’t insurance go some way to mediating this?

If the ATC is under staffed they’d charge a far higher premium since the risk of accidents is higher.

I’m not sure who would be liable for this accident, I’m guessing ATC is a government provided industry, and I understand governments don’t insure.

SamuelAdams• 4 months ago

It’s also hard to hire for. Candidates for job openings must be between the ages of 21-31 years old. Yes they are legally forbidden from hiring anyone older.

https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications

QuarterReptile• 4 months ago

I wonder how much of this can be attributed to breaking the ATC training/hiring pipelines back in 2014.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

kaliqt3• 4 months ago

That is not the real issue. Less people would be required if it was modernized.

angst_ridden• 4 months ago

Ha. My first job in '89 was working for an FFRDC reviewing IBM's Jovial code that was going to "revolutionize ATC" by modernizing everything.

I'm gonna guess that code never went into production. The problem seems easy until you start looking under the hood.

_moof10• 4 months ago

You can't just throw software at this. It's a complex system that involves way more than just an airplane and someone in a tower. Systems engineering, human factors, and safety management systems are the relevant disciplines if you'd like to start reading up. In addition there are decades of research on the dynamics between human operators and automation, and the answer is never as simple as "just add more automation." Increased reliance on automation can paradoxically decrease safety.

CPDLC is already being deployed domestically. It's currently available to all operators in en route segments.

All runway incursions at towered airports are reported, classified according to risk, and investigated.

mlyle3• 4 months ago

On the flipside, look at the success of TCAS. It doesn't have a perfect operational history. It hasn't completely eliminated midairs, either. But it took a relatively rare event and further reduced the frequency by about a factor of 5.

I wouldn't be so quick to rule out that there's some kind of relatively easy technological double check that could greatly reduce incidents. The fact that we've not gotten there despite years of effort to reduce runway incursions doesn't mean that it's not possible.

jonny_eh• 4 months ago

You can't just throw software at this

Ok, let's not try improving systems, how's that working out?

nikanj• 4 months ago

I would not trust my life to a government software project (See Phoenix Payroll for a typical case)

ranger207• 4 months ago

Automating ATC is similar to automating flying in general. Even if it's possible to automate 99% of 99% of flights, including even takeoff and landing, commercial flights still have two pilots because if things start to go wrong there's just so many edge cases that you can't easily write automation to handle all of them. Same thing for ATC, except even worse. They still have control towers because controller eyeballs still work even if nothing else does, if ground radar fails, or if a vehicle doesn't have an ADS-B transponder, or if a crash eliminates the radios, etc. There's just so many edge cases that making automation be able to handle everything is extremely difficult

jjk1664• 4 months ago

But still, even if you need humans when things go wrong, automating away all the work for when things go right is a massive load off those people. There will always be failures, the goal is fewer failures, and especially eliminating known failure modes.

mikepurvis4• 4 months ago

"each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed"

I feel the same way about close calls on the road, especially ones involving a vehicle and a vulnerable road user like a pedestrian or cyclist. Way too many lives being saved by a person jumping out of the way at the last minute who shouldn't have had to do so, and then cops and bureaucrats shrugging with "well what do you want us to do, the numbers don't show enough fatalities here for it to be worth fixing" and later when someone actually does die it becomes "this is a horrible tragedy that no one could have seen coming, let's focus on thoughts and prayers rather than accountability that could lead to structural change."

ApolloFortyNine7• 4 months ago

If it was all on video I'm all for it, though the argument "I wasn't driving" makes it more trouble than it's worth.

jmyeet• 4 months ago

There is a certain class of person who will take something simple like, say, brake lights on a car, and extrapolate it out to industrial control systems of something incredibly complex with demanding safety requirements and "observe" "it can't be that hard can it?"

I remember a debate a year or two ago about a plane ignoring instructions (IIRC it had changed frequencies) and had taxiied onto a runway when a plane was landing. Luckily the landing plane saw this and do a go around so nobody was harmed.

In the aftermath, there were similar complaints to yours. "Why can't they just have lights to block planes when a departing or landing plane was using the runway?" without thinking through how any of that works. For a start:

- How do you allocate that a runway is "in use"?

- If ATC does it, what if they fail to turn the system on?

- What if turning it on or off fails?

- What if it gets stuck on or off? How do you fix it? Are there procedures for ATC to override it anyway?

- There are multiple entry points to a runway. What if they're in different states?

- What company si going to sell such a system and accept liability?

- What training requirements will be needed for ATC and the pilots?

- What do you do if a pilot goes ahead and ignores it?

I think people can't think beyond cars. Cars have had unimaginable effort put into them so they can only operate within a certain window. Even then they require maintenance.

But as soon as you scale up to industrial safety and control systems, a power plant, the engine on a ship, etc you will end up with a bunch of controls where the people using them need to be skilled operators and it is essentially impossible to eliminate mistakes with automation and IT systems. You will need overrides. You will need redundancies. You will need to end up doing things nobody has ever considered before and have to rely upon training, education and experience to go beyond the envelope. That's just how it works.

simonjgreen• 4 months ago

What you are describing is sometimes considered to be part of the mythical Cat IIIC standard. The gap between Cat IIIB and Cat IIIC is being able to fully automate the entire taxiing and other ground manoeuvring. It is widely considered to be impossible to achieve safely with current tech. It does feel like the future though.

ErroneousBosh5• 4 months ago

That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point

How would you do it, then?

dzhiurgis• 4 months ago

The Rocket-man-bad-person tried to do this last year and essentially lost his company over this.

ghaff• 4 months ago

This isn’t really ATC though connected. I was just watching a presentation from Royal Schiphol today about a lot of the automation of the airport they’re putting in place as part of admittedly long-term 2050 plans. Lots of computer infrastructure rework.

mmaunder• 4 months ago

I'm a ground instructor and instrument rated pilot and I fly a 206 in and out of busy charlie and delta airports. I'm also a ham radio guy (WT1J) and an SDR dev. I'm 100% with you on this, but the amount of inertia you're dealing with here approaches infinity. And there are some weirdly strong arguments for not changing things.

We use AM simplex radio. That means everyone hears everyone else and that helps everyone build a situational awareness picture. Secondly we use AM because if someone transmits over someone else it makes a squealing noise so you know it happened. Also AM propagates pretty well.

Most people on HN could design a pretty good digital replacement in a few minutes - and no doubt some have been suggested in these comments. But its instructive to understand a bit about aviation history. The liability risk carried by aircraft and avionics manufacturers at one point go so bad that we stopped making general aviation planes in the USA. Then that liability was limited to a very small extent by GARA, and we had what we call the 'restart' of manufacturing.

So the idea of introducing a new mandatory replacement (not addition like ADS-B) for AM comms has a lot of resistance from quite a few areas: Manufacturers don't want to have to make the capex to reinvent and recertify new equipment. The US has a lot of old planes due to the lack of innovation because of the liability issue - and so those old planes all need a retrofit and pilots don't want to spend that money. Avionics for certified aircraft is already horrifically expensive. Legislators don't want to take on the risk of an incident attached to a bill they sponsored. And then there's the practical matter of now having two systems - the legacy AM comms, and the modern one that some have and some don't and the split in situational awareness between those populations.

So while full-duplex is seductive, and digital is seductive, and satellite seems like the obvious endgame - the reality of transitioning is very difficult.

Vehicles are listening to the same audio the pilots are, so they have the same mental picture of what's going on. Last week I talked to a maintenance vehicle at KBLI directly from the air because he was on a runway I needed to land on, at an untowered field. He cleared it, I landed, and he went about his business. So the system works pretty well most of the time.

I think the root of the issue here is actually something else. Firstly there is a lot of dissatisfaction among NATCA members (ATC union) towards their union, and the view seems to be that the union could be doing a lot better job of lobbying for their workers. You can visit /r/atc or /r/atc2 on reddit to learn more.

Secondly, the USA has fallen into a nasty trap where our government has positive incentives to choreograph shutdowns to get our congress members and senate members the face time that they crave. So there is a negative incentive to resolve a shutdown. Rather let it get hot, let it play out, and maybe you'll be the one to appear to save the day to your constituents. The trouble with this is that the department that creates one of the highest risks for civilians in a very visible way, is the FAA and the controllers in particular. So they have become a political football. And they're in an extremely stressful job without pay. And that's a very big problem.

You're seeing this play out in a growing adversarial relationship between the NTSB (e.g. DCA) and FAA, with NTSB tearing FAA a new one recently for DCA - and rightly so. I think that's led to more demotivation at FAA which hasn't helped.

So the situation is spiraling out of control. We have controllers who are overworked, who regularly don't get paid, and a union not doing the greatest job at advocating for them. Along with the recent cuts in government funding across the board.

It's frustrating for pilots. The best we've been able to do is bring our local TRACON folks stacks of free pizza, both in Colorado and Seattle. But that's obviously a token gesture. I don't see a way out of it. To be perfectly honest. And it's very frustrating because the amount of good work that FAA does, is quite startling. You'd be amazed how much data they produce including real-time feeds that are freely available to devs like us. Once you get into the IFR world and start looking not just at approach plates, but the review and updating process of each, the other maps that are produced, the real-time sitrep data that they're producing - it's really quite something what they've accomplished. And the world looks to FAA for its lead in aviation. We were the first to pioneer powered fixed wing flight, after all. I can only hope there's a way out of this.

48terry• 4 months ago

With the current atmosphere around technology, I feel like "digitize air traffic control" is an idea that will be both executed terribly by the money grubbing lunatics in control the government and tech corporations, AND received poorly by the public.

m3kw9• 4 months ago

sounds easy, but there will always be special cases that a machine hasn't handled and cause even more accidents

the_real_cher• 4 months ago

I thought the exact same thing!

The technology existed to at least help automate this decades ago.

TechSquidTV• 4 months ago

I guess they can't afford it, but my ego is telling me I could do this.

josefrichter• 4 months ago

I wrote my university thesis 25 years ago on automating some parts of art traffic management. The fact that it's "humans over radio" coordinating everything sounded ridiculous already back then.

but it's still "don't fix what ain't broken" situation - the system works surprisingly well, if you think of it, and nobody has balls (nor political power) to truly reform it.

b0rtb0rt• 4 months ago

i’m at the point where i’m pretty much never going to put my family on a plane unless we have a very urgent reason to visit family overseas or something

cineticdaffodil• 4 months ago

Avoidable catastrophes indiced as a measurement of cultural decline?

glitchc4• 4 months ago

Introduce a foreign object onto the runway and it will inevitably collide with an aircraft. The fire trucks aren't part of the airport traffic management system, their sudden presence is bound to lead to problems eventually.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the truck has a single radio (airplanes always have two) and was constantly switching between ATC and fire house frequencies. The probably never heard the "stop, stop, stop stop.."

It would also not surprise me if airports previously had dedicated fire services, which have since been outsourced for cost reasons.

banannaise2• 4 months ago

This is an airport-specific vehicle that was on radio with ATC at the time and had clearance to cross the runway. Nothing in your comment is correct.

glitchc4• 4 months ago

And yet you chose to respond! Indeed I stand corrected on the onsite firehouse, LaGuardia does have one but many airports do not.

davey48016• 4 months ago

According to this article, the air traffic controller gave the fire truck permission to cross the runway. So, it seems like they are part of the air traffic management system?

_moof10• 4 months ago

The fire trucks aren't part of the airport traffic management system

Yes they are.

canucker20162• 4 months ago

Video of the collision - https://x.com/airmainengineer/status/2036116651167384018

canucker20162• 4 months ago

Another link, video is slightly different (but collision is the same) - user is trying to select a region of the video I think

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWO75cTju2e/

caditinpiscinam3• 4 months ago

Damn that's awful.

I read elsewhere that the plane was only going 24mph when it hit the truck, and I didn't understand how the collision could have been that damaging, but I wasn't taking into account how much momentum a plane would have at that speed. From the video, it seems like a plane moving on the ground acts less like a car or truck and more like a very delicate freight train when it hits something.

hajile7• 4 months ago

Maybe they were talking about the truck going 24mph, but the plane is clearly going WAY faster than that.

I'm not completely sure but it seems like the runway entry lights are red which very clearly indicates the runway is in use. They should have known better.

sfilmeyer• 4 months ago

This article claims 104 mph, not 24 mph: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/us/timeline-air-canada-collis...

fracus2• 4 months ago

Planes aren't built to withstand head on collisions because in almost every case the passengers would all die anyway and to keep the weight of the plane down for fuel efficiency. Firetrucks on the other hand are super heavy due to all the water they carry.

stevage• 4 months ago

Yeah lots of sites are reporting 39 km/h but they're wrong. The plane is clearly travelling a lot faster than that.

Insanity2• 4 months ago

Captain Steve breakdown: https://youtu.be/Hx-GFeErXD8?si=iND_BkDrtGNapB7Q His videos are pretty insightful and always respectful. Highly recommended. Expect him to have new videos as more information becomes available.

deepspace• 4 months ago

Can we please not promote captain Steve? He is regarded as a pompous ambulance chaser in aviation video circles. Blancolerio is a much better resource. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSGMPaJ2OM

Insanity2• 4 months ago

I like his videos, I'm not in 'aviation circles' and I find his videos both educational and I like his demeanor. Do appreciate the link to Blancolerio, I hadn't heard of him (I'm not super into aviation videos). De gustibus et coloribus :)

krunck• 4 months ago

So the truck just crosses a runway because the ground controller said it was OK? Do ground vehicle drivers not take a half a second to look both ways before crossing a runway? It would have prevented this. Safely through redundant checks.

breakingcups• 4 months ago

Everybody knows better on the internet.

Waterluvian• 4 months ago

It would have prevented this.

You seem confident and well-informed. Can you tell us about the time of day, visibility conditions, and what it’s like driving a fire truck at an airport? We should really get this judgment to the driver ASAP.

mianos• 4 months ago

Yes. To have to do a certification to drive on the apron. There are all sorts of rules about being careful to cross the runway. I imagine they were rushing to the 'emergency'. To hit a plane there must have been multiple mistakes. The swiss cheese thing.

ozten• 4 months ago

Raining, misting. The plane may have been up in cloud cover when they looked and decided to enter the runway. Hard to judge the distance and trajectory of planes. Once the firetruck started moving, they may have seen it without time to gun it or back up.

It would have prevented this.

Wow.

userbinator2• 4 months ago

Look at the video. The plane was already on the ground.

graybeardhacker• 4 months ago

As long as the cost of an accident is lower than the cost of fixing the system this will continue to happen.

This is one of many examples of why capitalism needs to be kept in check with democratic government oversight. Sometimes the financial incentives are not high enough to warrant changing the system.

D-Coder• 4 months ago

Interesting historical overview: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/03/aviation-fai.... (Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47494469.)

consumer451• 4 months ago

There is video of the collision now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyTsnsWHoxc

patcon• 4 months ago

a firefighting truck was responding to a separate incident on a flight that had aborted its takeoff and reported a strange odour on board. Air traffic control recordings suggested the odour on the plane had made some flight attendants feel ill.

Not making light of this, but I imagine there is another story of the person who had some strange scented product that led the flight attendants to play it safe and phone it in. There may very be someone whose strong cologne or forgetfulness to leave a chemical at home resulted in 2 deaths :(

Sohcahtoa82• 4 months ago

strong cologne

Anyone else think that if you're going on an airplane, you shouldn't be wearing cologne or perfume? Antiperspirant/deodorant, absolutely. But giving yourself a strong scent when you're going to spend a few hours tightly-packed with other people feels rude.

hsbauauvhabzb2• 4 months ago

I would take someone wearing perfume over the other odours and travellers who are constantly sniffing/coughing and are clearly sick.

The_President• 4 months ago

That's why I choose the unscented foot spread Cornaway so that my crocs don't chafe against my ankles when on long flights.

philip1209• 4 months ago

the scent came from a rejected takeoff, so probably brake pad smoke - which could be medically serious, e.g. for COPD.

RTOs throw off a ton of energy: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/S6nZDGBPsak

floatingtorch• 4 months ago

It may have been a fume event which is very dangerous for everyone onboard.

A fume event occurs when bleed air used for cabin pressurisation and air conditioning in a pressurised aircraft is contaminated by fluids such as engine oil, hydraulic fluid, anti-icing fluid, and other potentially hazardous chemicals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fume_event

LetsGetTechnicl• 4 months ago

Such a terrible avoidable accident, on top of the absolute chaos happening inside the airports. In a normal timeline, Donald Trump would've died in obscurity years ago

QuantumNoodle3• 4 months ago

Either the number of big airline incidents around the world grew in the last 24 months or reporting on it became more popular. I wonder how much people get hurt relative to number that fly now.

gmerc2• 4 months ago

“around the world” citation needed

hedora2• 4 months ago

It looks like jet safety got better just about everywhere except the US, and 2025 was a bad year for turboprops:

https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2026-releases/2026-03-09-0...

On average, it was slightly worse globally, especially if you count fatalities (which were much worse).

QuantumNoodle3• 4 months ago

This is purely anecdotal. Some search queries about incidents I remember

- Jan 2025 mid air collision with helicopter near Reagan National, Washington, D.C.

- April 2025 China Eastern Airlines Flight runway overrun at Chongqing Jiangbei

- June 2025 Air India crashed after departure from Ahmedabad

- August 2025 incident at London Stansted where a DHL A330 landed long and struck the runway end

- September 2025 Tokyo Haneda: Inflight engine fire

There was one where the plane ended up on side or back. But I don't remember enough details to find the event

engineer_22• 4 months ago

Tower is human, gets tired, gets hungry; Tower made a mistake.

If Tower had some help, maybe an AI or maybe another set of ears, the tragedy could have been avoided.

An LLM monitoring instructions could easily have identified the mistake and alerted the ATC in time to save the situation. There was plenty of time to correct the mistake.

mememememememo8• 4 months ago

Dropping this "Move the fucking metal": https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1s1ldk0/everyone_...

Probably good here instead of seperate submission.

Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at LaGuardia

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