LaGuardia needed more staff on night of Air Canada collision

MONTREAL/NEW YORK, March 27: New York’s LaGuardia airport was so busy last Sunday before an Air Canada jet collided with a fire truck that additional staff should have been brought in to help, several current and former U.S. air traffic controllers ‌said.

Weather-related delays resulted in 70 commercial flights taking off or landing at the airport between 10 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., when the Air Canada Express CRJ-900 ‌regional jet crashed, killing both pilots.

That compares to an average of 53 flights during the same period on Sunday evenings in March since 2022 and the 31 that had been scheduled for the night of the crash, according to data from aviation consultancy Cirium.

Six of the controllers interviewed by Reuters described the workload as busy. Five of them said other controllers would typically be brought in or stay on past their normal shift end time to manage the heavier-than-scheduled number of flights.

The busy situation was compounded by a United Airlines flight declaring an emergency over a bad odor. That led an air traffic controller to clear a fire truck to cross the runway to help before he realized it was in the Air Canada jet’s path and tried unsuccessfully to get ‌it to stop, according to audio posted by LiveATC.net.

HIGH WORKLOAD

The ⁠LaGuardia crash has revived concerns over high U.S. controller workload, especially late at night, when staffing is typically limited to two people and one sometimes manages both active runways and ground vehicles at the airport.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Monday that LaGuardia was well-staffed with ⁠33 certified controllers and six in training, at a facility with a target of 37 controllers.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said there were two controllers working in the glass tower cab at the time.

Experts said the controller involved in the United Airlines emergency and the crash appeared to be handling both the ground and local tasks of directing air traffic based on the audio, though NTSB investigators are still reviewing whether the tasks were combined.

Ray Adams, a retired air traffic controller at nearby Newark airport in New Jersey, said it ‌was not typical in his experience to combine positions at night when there was a heavy workload.

An NTSB final report into a 1997 collision at LaGuardia between a private jet and a vehicle referenced new procedures being put in place afterward to ensure “local and ground positions shall not be combined prior to” midnight at the New York airport.

It was not clear whether those procedures remain in place. A spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey referred questions to the Federal Aviation Administration, which manages U.S. air traffic control. The FAA did not respond immediately to a request for comment on whether it had such procedures for LaGuardia.

An NTSB spokesperson said the probe would review relevant ‌tower procedures. Air crashes are typically caused by multiple factors, and NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said this week it was too early to rule anything out.

STAYING LATE

One current New York-area controller said when there was inclement weather and flights were delayed, controllers sometimes stayed later than their shift end time to help with the traffic.

“The weather wasn’t great; there was still a decent amount of traffic coming into LaGuardia,” the controller ‌said of the night of the collision on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak with media.

Aviation weather reports showed earlier ground-level and atmospheric icing, which slows the flow of traffic and causes delays.

The United Airlines flight that declared an emergency had aborted takeoff twice due to a fault with the plane’s anti-ice system, an airline industry source said. United declined to comment.

The controller involved in the Air Canada crash, who was not immediately relieved from duty afterward as the NTSB ‌said was normal practice, later told another pilot that he’d been dealing with an emergency earlier.

“I messed up,” the controller said in a shaken voice.

That pilot, who had seen the crash, responded, “Nah, man, you did the best you could.”