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 for several hours.
The Air Canada Express CRJ-900 plane, operated by Jazz Aviation, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal. Nine people remain hospitalized after the collision, which happened around 11.45pm ET on Sunday as the firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident.
In a press conference on Monday evening, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said an investigation was under way. The plane’s flight data recorder, or black box, was recovered, as was the cockpit voice recorder.
LaGuardia reopened at 2pm on Monday and the airport told passengers to expect delays and or cancellations. Homendy said the runway where the crash took place would remain closed for “some time” due to the amount of debris and hazardous material at the site.
“It’s going to be days,” she said.
In the moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard on a radio transmission giving clearance to a vehicle to cross part of the runway, then trying to stop it.
“Stop, Truck 1. Stop,” the transmission says. The controller is then heard quickly diverting incoming aircraft from landing. Following the collision, audio released by LiveATC appears to show air traffic controllers discussing the incident.
One controller says the impact “wasn’t good to watch”. Another responds: “Yeah, I know, I was here. I tried to reach out … We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
“Nah, man, you did the best you could,” the other controller says in the recording.
Donald Trump told reporters in response to the incident: “They made a mistake; it’s a dangerous business. That’s terrible.”
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said the collision was “deeply saddening”.
Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said in a statement that “our prayers this morning are with the families impacted by the ground collision at LaGuardia”, and that the FAA was deploying a team to the site to support the investigation. Officials will look at whether air traffic control staffing levels were an issue in the deadly crash.
Kathryn Garcia, the Port Authority executive director, said at a news conference the pilot and co-pilot were both based in Canada.
“The loss of our two fellow crewmembers onboard Flight 8646 is a profound tragedy,” said Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest airline pilot union in the world.
“These pilots dedicated their careers to the safe transport of passengers, and we are all thinking of their families, loved ones, and colleagues at Jazz Aviation during this devastating time.”
Photos showed significant damage to the nose of the plane, which was tilted upwards. Stairways used to evacuate passengers from aircraft were pushed up to the emergency exits on the jet.
A photo of the fire vehicle showed it had tipped on to its side. NBC News had earlier said a sergeant and an officer had broken limbs and were in stable condition at a hospital.
The truck had been responding to a United Airlines flight, which had declared an emergency due to an odour reported onboard. Controllers told the aircraft that fire trucks were available on site.
A 2025 FAA database showed that LaGuardia was in 2024 the 19th busiest out of more than 500 US airports, with more than 16.7 million passengers boarding there.
A ground stop was also put in place on Monday morning at Newark Liberty international airport in New Jersey. ABC News reported that an air traffic control tower was evacuated due to reports of smoke. Separate reports indicated that a bus had caught on fire on the New Jersey Turnpike expressway near the airport and was sending smoke billowing into the air.
Flight delays there subsequently mounted, with some exceeding an hour, as CNN transportation reporter Pete Muntean reported.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
