Air traffic control repeatedly urged a fire engine to stop before it collided with an aeroplane and killed two pilots, recordings have revealed.
The vehicle was hit by an Air Canada regional jet at New York‘s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night as it responded to another incident.
An audio recording reveals that a controller initially gave the fire engine clearance to cross runway four, telling “truck one and company” to “cross four, Delta”.
But the message then changes to “stop there, please”, before panic sets in and the controller pleads “stop, stop, stop, truck one, stop”.
For reasons that are so far unclear, the message went unheeded, and the aircraft’s nose ploughed into the fire engine, which rolled it over.
A flight attendant was found outside still strapped into her seat, sources told Sky’s US partner network NBC News, but the pilot and co-pilot were killed.
Authorities said two people in the fire engine were hurt, but their injuries were not life threatening.
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The Bombardier CRJ-900 had just landed from Montreal, and was carrying about 70 passengers and four crew. Forty-one of them were taken to hospitals, some with serious injuries.
Images show the aircraft’s nose ripped off, with the damaged emergency vehicle on its side nearby.
The fire engine had been responding to reports of a strange odour on another plane.
One passenger, Rebecca Liquori, told local TV station News12 Long Island: “Everybody just jolted out of their seats. People hit their heads. People were bleeding.”
Audio from roughly 20 minutes after the crash appears to show the air traffic controller blaming himself.
“We were dealing with an emergency earlier,” he says. “I messed up.”
Jazz Aviation was operating the service, which normally takes about 90 minutes, on behalf of Air Canada.
More than 600 flights to and from LaGuardia had been cancelled by midday, according to FlightAware.com. The airport has since reopened.
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said that the airport would operate on reduced capacity for “some time” in a press conference.
President Donald Trump told reporters it was a “terrible” situation, adding that there had been a “mistake”.
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There is a well-documented shortage of air traffic controllers in the US, but former Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control chief Mike McCormick told AP that LaGuardia is “not a control tower that has perennial staffing problems”.
The airport is also one of 35 in the US with an advanced surface surveillance system to track planes and other vehicles on the tarmac.
