Two pilots lost their lives after an Air Canada passenger plane collided with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday, March 22.
Photos from the scene showed the plane tilting backwards, with its cockpit almost seared off. The fire truck, for its part, was surrounded by debris, wreckage, and warped metal.
Authorities said 41 people were taken to the hospital, with 31 soon discharged, while others suffered serious injuries.
As the investigation into the tragedy gets underway, retired aviation investigator Jeff Guzzetti has shared his theory about what may have caused it.
Jeff Guzzetti has opined that the collision is unlikely to be the result of a mechanical failure
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According to his LinkedIn, Guzzetti has over 35 years of experience in aviation safety.
He currently serves as president of Guzzetti Aviation Risk Discovery, LLC, a consultancy he founded in 2019 to help flight operators implement essential safety measures.
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While the government investigative agency has refrained from providing a cause for the LaGuardia collision at this point, Guzzetti has suggested it appears to have been caused by a shortage of air traffic controllers.
“Over 3,000 controller positions need to be fulfilled in the United States, and that may be a factor here,” the expert said as he hypothesized that a single individual may have been handling both air and ground traffic, per The New York Times.
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Air Canada Flight AC8646 had landed from Montreal at LaGuardia’s Runway 4 at around 23:40 local time.
The truck that it collided with had been called onto the runway minutes earlier to address an issue with a separate plane, according to Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia.
Tower audio from LaGuardia captures a staff member warning, “Truck One, stop, stop, stop,” in the final moments before the accident.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will be looking at the speed at which the plane was moving, the staffing of the air traffic control tower at the time, and other factors, according to Garcia.
The analyst’s claim about understaffing contributing to the LaGuardia crash was backed by additional voices in the field
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Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the NTSB, said the LaGuardia accident “underscores two of the most pressing aviation problems that the country is facing.”
“One is that there continues to be a shortage of air traffic controllers,” and the second is “the lack of clarity in communications involving critical clearance by controllers to aircraft and vehicles that occupy runways.”
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“The truck asked for permission to cross Runway 4. The readback was that they saw them at Runway 4. The conversations were quick and clipped. I never heard the word ‘confirmed to cross,’ but it was apparent that the fire truck felt that they had approval to go across,” Goelz said of the LaGuardia miscommunication.
Kivanc Averenli, a professor and expert on commercial aviation safety at Syracuse University in New York, in an email to the BBC, said that the audio coming from the control room hints “one controller may have been handling both ground and air traffic.”
Margaret Wallace, a professor of aviation management at Florida Institute of Technology, said it is not unusual to have one controller handle both air and ground traffic in cases of staff shortages.
However, having one individual control both is “far from ideal” at a busy airport like LaGuardia, Averenli added.
According to Federal Aviation Administration data released in 2025, LaGuardia was the 19th busiest airport in the US in the previous year.
A flight attendant on board the Air Canada flight survived the crash, which her daughter believes is miraculous
Solange Tremblay was stuck in her seat when the accident happened.
The impact of the crash sent her flying 300 feet from the aircraft, her daughter, Sarah Lepine, informed Canadian news station TVA Nouvelles.
Her mother suffered a broken leg requiring surgery, but did not sustain any other injuries.
“I am still trying to understand how all this happened, but she truly must have had a guardian angel watching over her,” Lepine said.
Image credits: MS NOW
Jeff Guzzetti, meanwhile, said Tremblay survived because of her seat, which he described as a “jump seat.”
It is specifically “designed to withstand more crash loads than passenger seats because you need the flight attendant to help passengers get out of an airplane after a crash.”
Zohran Mamdani and other New York City politicians have addressed the LaGuardia crash
Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of the Big Apple, noted that he had “been briefed on the tragic collision.”
“I am grateful to our first responders, whose swift actions saved lives,” he added, informing that the NTSB “is investigating the incident and the city is in close contact with federal, state, and local partners.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the incident “heartbreaking.”
She added: “Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected.”
“What a horrific mistake. Communication failed,” a netizen said about the accident
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