Nine people hospitalised and airport closed after landing plane hits fire truck responding to separate incident
The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport, in an incident that closed the airport.
The collision also caused serious injuries with nine people in hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.
The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane, operated by its partner Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal, based on a preliminary passenger list that remained subject to confirmation. Jazz is owned by Chorus Aviation.
The pilot and copilot died because the single ATC controller was overwhelmed trying to handle two frequencies and an emergency with another plane on the ground. ATC accidentally cleared the fire truck to cross the runway where the plane was landing.
Here’s audio from all of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbm-QJAAzNY
You can hear ATC desperately trying to stop the truck.
The dead pilot and copilot did nothing wrong, certainly not from the initial information we have so far.
I can understand trying to be funny, but I really don’t see the humour here. Seems in very very poor taste to me.
I never claimed go have good taste. But seems like a shitty situation all around.
CANADIAN TERRORIST ATTACK.