LaGuardia air traffic control personnel may have violated procedures the night of the Air Canada crash
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Flight attendants working at LaGuardia Airport on the night an Air Canada plane collided with a fire truck may have violated agency procedures by combining roles before midnight, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The crash at New York’s airport at about 11:37 pm ET on March 22, which killed both pilots, has renewed concerns about the shortage of air traffic control personnel in the US and the overwork of regulators across the country.
Staff shortages, including at the supervisor level, are putting controllers in the combined roles of managing local air and ground traffic more often, according to several air traffic controllers across the country.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said last week that as part of its investigation into the crash, it is seeking information about the functions of each controller.
The deadly Air Canada crash at LaGuardia Airport has renewed questions about the long-standing shortage of air traffic controllers in the United States and the potential safety implications.
Examination of roles
If the controller involved in the collision was performing both air and ground duties, that would not be consistent with standard operating procedures for the LaGuardia tower. The NTSB’s final report on the 1997 collision at LaGuardia between a private plane and a car referred to new procedures being put in place afterward to ensure that “local and terrestrial areas will not be combined before” midnight at the New York airport.
As of 2023, the rule was still in effect, according to a document of the LaGuardia tower’s standard operating procedures seen by Reuters.
“The positions in the LaGuardia tower should not be consolidated before midnight local time or 90 minutes after the start of the transition, whichever comes first,” said the 2023 document, which people familiar with the matter said still exists in 2026.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of US air traffic control, said it is “supporting the NTSB in accident investigations and taking any necessary safety measures based on evidence.”
The functions of the controller are not clear
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters last week that two controllers were working in the glass-enclosed portion of the airport tower at the time of the crash.
There was an area controller in charge of the active runways and the adjacent airfield and a control controller who provided the pilots with take-off clearance, he said.
The air traffic controller’s cry of ‘I’m screwed’ after the fatal runway crash at LaGuardia was immediately heard throughout the aviation world. Nationally, CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe talks to people with decades of experience in the tower to understand how the crisis could affect the industry, which is already struggling with employment.
“It is not yet clear who was conducting the operations of the ground controller. We have conflicting information,” he said, referring to the position that controls the movement of aircraft and vehicles on taxiways, which do not include active runways.
Several current and retired air traffic controllers said they believed the local controller in charge of the active runways was handling traffic on the ground, based on audio posted by LiveATC.net.
The NTSB did not return a request for comment.
Air crash investigations often find accidents due to multiple contributing factors, rather than a single cause.
Rules for combining positions
The controller, responsible for operational safety, came in at 10:30 p.m. ET the night of the crash, while the local controller signed off at 10:45 p.m., the NTSB’s Homendy said.
CBC News reporter Adrienne Arsenault asks retired FAA air traffic controller Harvey Scolnick to answer the biggest questions she has after Air Canada Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, killing both pilots.
According to LaGuardia’s standard operating procedures document, local and regional positions were not to be assembled until midnight early. The document also states that positions will only be combined as a road permit. If the positions are merged, as the volume of traffic increases, the positions will be separated, the document says.
On the night of the Air Canada crash, weather-related delays caused 70 commercial flights to take off or land at the airport between 10 p.m. and 11:37 p.m. ET, compared to an average of 53 during the same period since 2022, according to Cirium data.
Several controllers interviewed by Reuters described the workload that night as hectic and said some controllers would often be brought in or stay past their normal deadline to handle a heavier-than-scheduled number of flights.
Local and international positions were to remain unconnected until at least midnight, the current New York area administrator said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“And that’s not even talking about the traffic, volume and difficulty that night,” he said.
