Ground radar didn't alert air traffic control before jet hit truck at LaGuardia Airport, NTSB says

A ground surveillance system did not alert air traffic control during Sunday's fatal crash at LaGuardia Airport as a landing jetliner was about to collide with a fire truck crossing the runway, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

The system, which uses radar, satellites and transponders to warn air traffic controllers of potential danger on the runway, couldn't precisely track the fire truck among other vehicles in the vicinity of the runway because it lacked a transponder, chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. She said ground vehicles should be equipped with the devices to allow for monitoring, although the NTSB hasn't made that a formal recommendation. 

"Air traffic controllers should know what's before them, whether it's on the airport surface or in the airspace," she said, adding incredulously: "This is 2026."

The NTSB, which investigates all major civil transportation accidents in the United States, delivered its preliminary findings about 39 hours after the crash of a Port Authority fire truck and an Air Canada regional jet with 72 passengers and four crew. Both pilots were killed in the crash. The Associated Press reported Tuesday they were identified as Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest, both Canadian, according to family members and a Canadian college.

Homendy said it was unclear whether the driver of the truck heard the air traffic controller's repeated pleas over the radio to "stop" driving on the runway in the moments before the crash. She said the investigation is also focusing on staffing in the control tower overnight, when manpower tends to be lower than during the daytime.

 The radar system used at LaGuardia, and several dozen other airports, is called Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X, or ASDE-X, Homendy said Tuesday at a news conference at the airport. It is a surveillance system air traffic controllers use to track the surface movement of aircraft and vehicles. 

.

In an unsigned response Tuesday to a Newsday inquiry, the Port Authority, which runs LaGuardia, declined to say why the fire truck lacked a transponder, or provide the number of ground vehicles with transponders at its airports.

William Waldock, a professor of aircraft accident investigation and crash management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Arizona campus, told Newsday the system is "a combination of surface surveillance radar and a whole bunch of different sensors located around the airport that detect movement, plus it also uses ... sensors on the airplanes themselves."

"Essentially what it does is integrate all of that with satellite sourcing so the [air traffic] controllers can actually see on a radar screen everything that's moving on airport surfaces — ground vehicles and aircraft," said Waldock, who helped in the investigation of a 1992 crash at LaGuardia.

Two people in tower

Homendy said two people were in the air traffic control tower at the time of the crash: a controller-in-charge, who is responsible for all safety of operations, and a local controller, who is in charge of takeoffs and landings.

But she said it was unclear which person was the ground controller, meaning the air traffic controller responsible for taxiing aircraft and vehicles like the fire truck. During busy periods, ground control is usually handled by a separate person, but sometimes at night those duties are combined with other responsibilities.

"We do have logs, but there's also conflicting information, including dates and times on the logs, so now we have to go through that and rectify some of those inconsistencies," Homendy said.

Harvey Scolnick, who spent about 40 years as an air traffic controller at Kennedy Airport and elsewhere, told Newsday that when positions were combined, it had to be documented in the tower’s sign-in log — including the time period for which they were combined.

Scolnick said combining positions late at night can be OK, as long as things remain quiet. But in this situation, a separate emergency arose due to a suspicious odor on another aircraft — the one to which the fire truck was responding.

"Every controller that I have ever known has said something that he immediately smacked himself on the side of the head, saying, ‘Why did I do that?’ But it never ends up being catastrophic ... because they just missed," he said.

Soon after Sunday's crash, the controller in the tower was heard saying "I messed up" to another pilot, according to an audio recording.

In the aftermath of the collision, Scolnick noted, the controller remained professional and continued to work. "After this tragedy ... [the controller] kept working, kept controlling airplanes, kept moving stuff around to get them out of the way," Scolnick said. "He kept doing his job, and I think he deserves a commendation for that. Anybody can make a mistake." 

Runway 4, where the crash happened, remained closed on Tuesday, reducing the capacity at LaGuardia, one of the nation's busiest airports.

Long TSA lines

The NTSB announcement came as hourslong passenger security lines returned to LaGuardia.

Some of the dozens of NTSB investigators probing the crash Tuesday had themselves been stuck in security lines because of staffing shortages due to a partial government shutdown.

Meanwhile, the mangled plane sat on the runway, tilted upward, its nose destroyed. The runway was closed indefinitely. The NTSB said Monday there was "a lot of debris" and hazardous material scattered nearby.

Sunday night's crash also injured two Port Authority officers riding in the fire truck, which was en route to the emergency aboard a nearby plane.

Outside the Rockville Centre home of one of those officers, Michael Orsillo, a Port Authority police vehicle was parked.

Orsillo's wife declined to comment.

The airport was shut down from late Sunday night until 2 p.m. Monday when it and reopened with a reduced capacity.

Newsday's Nicholas Spangler and Maureen Mullarkey contributed to this report.