At least 41 people had to go to hospitals for treatment, and the pilot and copilot of the crashed plane are dead after a tragic runway accident at a major New York airport, not long before midnight on Sunday.
The crash occurred at about 11:30 p.m. at LaGuardia Airport when an airplane crashed into an emergency vehicle on the runway. It is not clear why the plane’s pilots either did not notice the emergency vehicle or could not avoid it by the time they did, though the air traffic controller audio indicates that both had clearance to be on the runway. Two Port Authority police officers are among those injured in the crash, with bones broken.
The emergency vehicle was a Port Authority firetruck, and the airplane was an Air Canada craft (not pictured above), according to NBC New York. The airplane was almost at the end of its landing procedure when it ran into the firetruck. As the crash only occurred very late yesterday, March 22, there does not seem to be any official information yet on the names of the victims or what went wrong, except for an alleged audio that indicates that it might have been a mistake from air traffic controllers, rather than the pilot or copilot.
Audio from Air Traffic Control when plane collided with fire truck at New York airport:
“Stop Truck 1, stop!”
“We were dealing with an emergency earlier and I messed up” pic.twitter.com/7dJcFov4gq
— BNO News (@BNONews) March 23, 2026
NBC New York added what details were available as of Monday morning, however:
There were 72 passengers and four crew members onboard the plane; 41 passengers, crew, and aircraft rescue and firefighting officers were taken to area hospitals for injuries…Both the aircraft and the truck had runway clearance at the time of the accident, a source says. Federal aviation teams are investigating…Chilling audio reveals the moments before and after an arriving airplane collided with an emergency truck …
Air traffic controllers can be heard giving directions to the Air Canada flight, then the firetruck as they neared Runway 4 at the Queens airport around 11:30 p.m. Sunday. A person is heard quickly instructing the truck to stop multiple times before the audio cuts out. When it comes back, someone indicates they “messed up.”
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The Trump administration has been arguing for reform of the Federal Aviation Administration and hiring within the airline industry after years of controversial hiring practices based more on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) than on merit. Last year, the Trump administration initiated a review of FAA personnel to determine how many DEI hires there were, and Donald Trump himself has argued DEI hiring can contribute to crashes by providing incompetent air traffic controllers.
Of course, we don’t know if that is what happened in the LaGuardia crash, but if the audio accurately indicates a culprit, then an air traffic controller was apparently to blame somehow. The horrible part about making a mistake in such a job, no matter how intentionally innocent, is that just one mistake can be deadly.
We pray for all those who are still traveling by air today that there will be no more crashes or deadly accidents.
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