Black boxes recovered in deadly Air Canada crash, as pilots warn about safety issues
· Toronto Sun
OTTAWA — Both the data and voice recorders of the doomed Air Canada Express plane that collided with a fire truck in a New York City airport have been recovered.
But as questions remain on the circumstances of how and why an airport fire truck was given clearance to cross an active runway, directly in the path of Flight 8646.
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On Tuesday, U.S. media outlets reported on concerns raised by other pilots about safety issues at LaGuardia Airport, including two years of incidents and reports unearthed by CNN.
Operational tempo at LaGuardia sparks concern among pilots
One report has a pilot lamenting about how unsustainably busy the Big Apple airport is becoming.
“The pace of operations is building in LGA, the controllers are pushing the line,” one pilot reported to NASA’s ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting Program), according to CNN.
“On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA (Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.) did before the accident there.”
The pilot is referring to the Jan. 29, 2025, mid-air collision between an American Airlines CRJ700 and a U.S. Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter over the Potomac River that killed 67 people.
Sunday’s collision occurred just five months after two regional jets, both operated by Delta-owned Endeavour Air, collided on a taxiway at LaGuardia.
Both planes sustained damage, and one of the plane’s crew members was sent to hospital with injuries.
That came just three months after a scary close-call in May 2025 , where a LaGuardia air traffic controller gave takeoff clearance to a Republic Airways airliner while a United Airlines plane was still on the runway.
In that near-miss, the Republic Airways jet was forced to abort its takeoff — described in news coverage as a “chaotic communication breakdown.”
Nobody was injured in that case.
Plane vs. vehicle collisions a concern, says aviation attorney
Aviation Attorney Robert A. Clifford, founder and senior partner of Clifford Law Office, said that while the NTSB continue their investigation, it does appear Sunday’s collision apparently came as a result of an error by the LaGuardia tower controller.
“This preliminary information at the very least highlights the continuing need for better and safer ATC and ground vehicle control systems and protocols to assure the safe movement of ARFF vehicles on airport surfaces,” he said.
“The FAA and others in the aviation industry must learn from these mistakes and develop better and more redundant means of preventing these ground accidents, especially late at night when visibility, fatigue, and other human performance issues may reduce safety.”
Movement of aircraft and ground vehicles in and around airports is handled by a team of air traffic controllers.
Tower controllers are responsible for all movements on runways, as well as all immediately arriving and departing aircraft.
Once landed, aircraft are handed off to ground controllers, who coordinate planes’ movement between runways and the terminal — as well as ground vehicles such as towing tugs, service trucks, airport staff and emergency vehicles.
This isn’t the first crash involving aircraft and ground vehicles, Clifford said — pointing to the 1984 collision of an Aeroflot plane and maintenance vehicles on the runway at Omsk airport in the former Soviet Union, killing 178 people, and the Nov. 2022 death of two airport firefighters in Lima, Peru, after a LATAM Airbus collided with their fire truck while taking off.