Two people were killed and several others badly hurt when an Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck on a runway while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport late on Sunday night, officials said.
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The pilot and copilot were killed in the collision, which crushed the nose of the aircraft, while 39 passengers and crew members were taken to area hospitals, some with serious injuries. Most have since been released from treatment, authorities said on Monday.
Two Port Authority employees who were travelling in the fire truck also suffered injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening, said Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.
The pilot and copilot were both based out of Canada, Garcia said during a news conference early Monday.
The airport will remain closed until at least 2 pm local time (8 pm CET) on Monday to facilitate the investigation, which is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The fire truck was travelling across the runway to respond to a separate incident aboard a United Airlines flight, whose pilot had reported “an issue with odor”, said Garcia, who deferred additional questions about the sequence of events leading up to the crash to the NTSB.
There were 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the aircraft, a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada, according to a statement from the airline. The flight originated at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the major airport serving Montreal.
Photos and videos from the scene showed severe damage to the front of the aircraft, with cables and debris hanging from a mangled cockpit. Nearby, a damaged emergency vehicle lay on its side.
Stairways used to evacuate passengers from the aircraft were pushed up to the emergency exits on the jet, a Bombardier CRJ. The impact left the jet with its crumpled nose tilted upward.
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 tarmac, then trying to stop it.
“Stop, Truck 1. Stop”, the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.
Air traffic controllers are not impacted by the partial government shutdown that has caused long delays at airport security checkpoints in recent days. They have been affected by past shutdowns.
As passengers straggled out of the airport into the dark early on Monday, some described having arrived at LaGuardia hours before their flight, hoping to beat the lines.
Traveller Arturo Davidson said his Miami-bound flight was on the tarmac Sunday night when fellow passengers saw the collision or its aftermath and reactions rippled through the cabin.
The passengers were soon told there had been an accident. About 20 minutes later, they were informed the airport was closing and they must return to the terminal, he said later Monday, gazing at a departure board filled with cancellations.
“I don’t think we’re going at two,” he sighed, referring to the time Monday afternoon that officials gave as the earliest for reopening LaGuardia.
Located in the New York borough of Queens, LaGuardia is New York's third-busiest airport, serving 33.5 million passengers in 2024, according to port authority figures.
It completed an $8 billion redevelopment in 2024, upgrading its aging infrastructure with new terminals and roadways.
Deadly air crashes in the US in recent years include a collision between a passenger jet and an army helicopter near Washington in January 2025 that killed 67 people. Other incidents and close calls have taken place while aircraft were on the ground.