The blame game around the horrific Air Canada crash took a turn as new issues were raised.
Investigators are still examining the moment Air Canada’s Flight 8646 slammed into a fire truck on the runway of LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night in New York.
An issue with the fire truck has since been raised, along with concerns about the air traffic controllers’ midnight shift.
The blame game around the horrific Air Canada crash took a turn as new issues were raised
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Authorities revealed that there were two air traffic controllers in LaGuardia’s tower when the plane crashed into the truck just before midnight.
The firetruck was on the runway, responding to an issue with a completely different plane at the time.
A controller was heard frantically asking the truck to stop, moments before the aircraft collided with the vehicle.
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Two pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, lost their lives in the crash. Numerous others were left injured.
Based on initial reports and the viral audio clip from air traffic control (ATC), many were quick to dissect the role of the unidentified controller in the tragedy.
Many were quick to blame ATC for the tragedy, but the NTSB chair raised other issues
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Some pointed fingers at ATC, including a retired air traffic controller, Harvey Sconick, who claimed the “controller who crossed those vehicles while the airplane was landing just went brain-de*d for a minute.”
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy said it was important to focus on the systemic issues and not individual failings.
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“I would caution pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved. This is a heavy workload environment,” Homendy said during a Tuesday press conference.
While many blamed ATC, Homendy said the focus shouldn’t be so narrow and flagged a critical issue with the fire truck.
The truck was not equipped with a transponder, which is a piece of technology that would have helped air traffic controllers identify and track vehicles on the ground.
“I would caution pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved,” Jennifer Homendy said
LaGuardia is one of the airports in the country with an advanced surface surveillance system. The ATC tower has an ASDE-X display that can show controllers the location of every plane and vehicle.
For the ASDE-X to work properly, “you have to know where ground vehicles and aircraft are,” and in this case, that wasn’t possible since the “ground vehicle did not have a transponder.”
Consequently, on Sunday night, the ASDE-X did not activate an alert “due to the close proximity of vehicles merging and unmerging near the runway, resulting in the inability to create a track of high confidence.”
A replay of the ASDE-X did not show anything “go in front of the plane on the runway” during the collision, Homendy said.
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The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) urged airports with advanced systems, like the one in LaGuardia, to have transponders included in their ground vehicles as well.
“Air traffic controllers should know what’s before them, whether it’s on airport surface or in the airspace. They should have that information to ensure safety,” Homendy said.
The NTSB chair also pointed out possible issues with the ATC’s work structure in LaGuardia, one of the busiest airports in the US.
It is typical for two controllers to handle the airport’s midnight shift, but many have questioned the multitasking expected from the controllers during those hours.
Two pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, lost their lives in the crash
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“The midnight shift, as a reminder, is one that we have many times at the NTSB raised concerns about with respect to fatigue,” Homendy said.
“Again, I do not know. We have no indication that was a factor here, but it is a shift that we have been focused on in past investigations,” she continued.
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The viral audio clip from ATC revealed that the controller involved had to continue working and handling other planes even after the Air Canada flight’s catastrophic landing.
Normally, “they would be relieved,” but the controller involved was “still on duty for several minutes.”
Homendy pointed out that the controller continued working for several minutes even after the devastating collision
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“We have questions about that. Was anybody available to relieve that controller? We don’t know that yet,” Homendy said during the press briefing.
While the investigation continued into the crash, retired aviation investigator Jeff Guzzetti suggested that a shortage of air traffic controllers may be a factor.
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“Over 3,000 controller positions need to be fulfilled in the United States, and that may be a factor here,” he told The New York Times about the controller-shortage issue.
The audio coming from the control room suggested that “one controller may have been handling both ground and air traffic,” Kivanc Averenli, a professor and expert on commercial aviation safety at Syracuse University in New York, told BBC.
More than 3,000 controller positions are expected to be fulfilled in the US, an expert said
It is not unusual for one controller to handle both air and ground traffic in cases of staff shortages.
But such a situation is “far from ideal” at a busy airport like LaGuardia, according to Margaret Wallace, a professor of aviation management at Florida Institute of Technology.
“Lack of staff due to budget cuts was the true issue,” a netizen speculated
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