LaGuardia plane crash: Airport reopens after collision kills pilots of Air Canada flight; ATC tower was well-staffed
In an update from NTSB officials on Monday night, they said the Air Canada flight’s cockpit voice recorder and cockpit data recorder (black boxes) were retrieved.
Officials said a hole was cut into the tail area of the plane to gain access and retrieve the recorders. They were immediately sent to Washington, D.C. to be reviewed.
The NTSB briefing did not provide a lot more information as investigators are still making their way to the scene, but more details are expected to be shared Tuesday.
There is “tremendous amount of debris” from the collision which expands from the taxiway to the runway and across other areas, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. Investigators need to go through all the debris, collect and document evidence, which she said could take days before the runway could be reopened for operations.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy led a briefing on the agency’s investigation so far.
The NTSB has preliminary information on staffing inside the tower at the time of the collision, but Homendy said they will only share it once it’s been verified. More information on staffing and the background and experience of the pilot is expected to be shared by the NTSB Tuesday.
A team of 25 investigators arrived on scene at LaGuardia with more expected to arrive soon. The investigators were able to conduct a walking inspection and safety walk of the scene on Monday.
“We also began to collect information from FAA and others, certainly on air traffic control, staffing in the tower, communications training. We’re looking for information today from the fire and rescue department on their crew and on their vehicles, what the capabilities were of their vehicles, and you know, everything from how much they weighed to what they were carrying. And then we began to form our investigative groups for this investigation,” Homendy said at the briefing.
NTSB is collecting surveillance video, and the FAA will also be sharing Airport Surface Detection Equipment replay of the event that was provided to the controller.
“We will be looking at that where we can see where the aircraft was at certain times, and whether the truck was visible on as the we’ll also be getting an as the analysis from the FAA tech center that will provide us information on whether alerts were generated, and other data, including distance of aircraft, the aircraft that was landing on Runway 4 as the firefighting vehicle was approaching the runway from taxiway Delta,” Homendy said.
The agency’s first full day of investigation will be Tuesday.
Homendy also noted the challenges the investigators faced to get to the scene, from LaGuardia’s closure earlier Monday, to the ground stop at Newark and the ongoing travel disruptions from the partial government shutdown.
She said the NTSB’s air traffic control specialist was stuck in TSA lines for three hours until they intervened with Houston airport authorities to get her to New York. Some also took the train or and many drove to New York, Homendy said.
