2 pilots killed when jet collides with fire truck in New York

NEW YORK – A runway collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late Sunday killed two people, injured dozens more and shut down one of the busiest domestic airports in the region.

The crash occurred when an Air Canada jet landing Sunday collided with a Port Authority fire truck that had been responding to a separate incident. Investigators were working Monday morning to determine the cause of the accident, which killed the plane’s pilots. It appeared to be the first fatal accident at LaGuardia since 1992.

The disruption was expected to ripple across the region and the nation at the start of the workweek, with hundreds of flights canceled as of Monday morning. New York City officials urged drivers to avoid the area around LaGuardia, warning of road closures and traffic delays.

A recording of audio from the air traffic tower, which was verified by The New York Times, indicated that the controllers may have been distracted by an earlier incident at the airport at the time of the accident Sunday. It was unclear to what they were referring.

Forty-one passengers and crew members were taken to the hospital, Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the airport operator, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at a news conference early Monday. She said 32 of them had been released and that some of the others had been seriously injured.

Two officers in the fire truck were among those hospitalized and were in stable condition, Garcia said. The truck was responding to a call from another aircraft whose pilot had reported an issue with odor in the cabin, she said.

The collision, which occurred around 11:40 p.m. Sunday, involved Air Canada Express Flight 8646, which had departed from Montreal and landed at LaGuardia late Sunday. The CRJ-900 jet was operated by Jazz Aviation LP, which said in a statement that a preliminary passenger list indicated the flight was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members.

The Federal Aviation Administration first issued a ground stop at LaGuardia early Monday as emergency crews swarmed the damaged jet on a runway. A New York Times journalist saw police vehicles and fire trucks next to a white Air Canada Express plane with a sheared-off nose. A damaged truck lay on its side nearby.

LaGuardia, one of three major airports serving the New York City area, is a critical hub for the busy Northeast corridor, with nearly 900 departures and arrivals each day, according to the Port Authority. About half the flights to and from LaGuardia are for Delta Air Lines, which said Monday that it had canceled flights through the afternoon and that more cancellations could follow.