Fire truck ‘stop, stop, stop’ before deadly LaGuardia crash but didn’t know warning was for them: NTSB

The National Transportation Safety Board has published its preliminary report on last month’s deadly crash involving an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport, concluding communication failures and a lack of transponders in the truck played roles in the collision.

The report, released Thursday, said the truck’s driver heard instructions to “stop, stop, stop” over the radio, but did not realize the message was intended for them.

After the initial warning, the fire truck’s turret operator heard the controller say, “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” and realized the warning was for his crew. By then, the report said, the truck was already on Runway 4 as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was landing.

The jet and the truck collided seconds after the plane touched down. Pilots Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest were killed, and 33 people were injured, including six who had serious injuries.

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According to air traffic control transmissions, Flight 8646 had been cleared to land on Runway 4 at 11:35 p.m.

About two minutes later — and 25 seconds before the crash — the fire crew asked to cross the same runway, which lies between the airport’s fire station and the spot where a United Airlines jet had parked.

The radio warnings available online since the crash capture an air traffic controller saying “stop” at least 10 times while urgently telling the fire truck not to cross the runway. The NTSB’s preliminary report on Thursday summarizes interviews with the firefighters.

Another factor in the crash was the fact that emergency vehicles at LaGuardia were not outfitted with a transponder as part of LaGuardia’s surface surveillance system, known as ASDE-X. The system is designed to prevent runway collisions by creating a display air traffic controllers can use to track the movement of every plane and vehicle in real time.

The system provides a visual and audible alert when it detects a potential collision, giving controllers the time to intervene, but neither alarm went off the night of the crash.

None of the seven emergency vehicles in the area were outfitted with transponders, the report said. They were detected as radar targets, but the ASD-X system couldn’t get a reliable read on their positions to potentially predict a collision course because the vehicles were too close together and merging.

“As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1 (or any of the other vehicles in the group) and did not predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane,” the report read.