Firefighter heard ‘stop stop stop’ before deadly LaGuardia collision – but didn’t know who the warning was for, NTSB finds

By Aaron Cooper, CNN

New York (CNN) — The air traffic controller who cleared a fire truck to cross an active runway at LaGuardia Airport last month had minutes before told a plane to land on the same runway, according to a new report on the deadly March 23 collision from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The controller tried to stop the truck when they realized the crash was imminent, the NTSB said in its preliminary update released Thursday. But one of the firefighters inside told investigators he didn’t realize the first shouted warning was for the truck until he saw the plane barreling towards him.

The report confirms new information about the collision of an Air Canada regional jet operated by Jazz Aviation and an airport firefighting truck on March 23. The two pilots were killed in the crash and 39 people were injured.

At 11:35:07 p.m., the local air traffic controller, also called “tower,” cleared Jazz flight 646 to land on LaGuardia’s runway 4, the NTSB found.

Twenty-one seconds later, a convoy of fire trucks left the station to respond to an emergency where another plane reported an odor in the cabin the other side of the airport.

Nearly two minutes after the plane was cleared to land, at 11:37:04 p.m., the same controller instructed the fire trucks to cross the active runway, the report said. The jet was just 130 feet above the ground and a half mile from the runway.

At that time, the red stop lights embedded in the taxiway in front of the truck were illuminated, indicating the truck should not proceed.

Seven seconds later, the plane crossed the end of the runway. Moments later the controller shouted, “stop stop stop” on the radio, the report said, then later added, “truck 1, stop stop stop.”

Four seconds later, the plane hit the fire truck going 104 mph, according to the NTSB.

One of the firefighters in the truck told investigators he heard the first call from the tower to stop, but didn’t realize it was for them until they were on the runway and saw the plane coming at them, the report said.

The fire truck’s driver had three years of experience and the other firefighter had 12 years.

The tower controller had about 18 years of experience, and had been on duty for less than an hour at the time of the crash, the NTSB found. There was one other controller on duty that night, who served as the controller-in-charge and also handled planes on the ground. The NTSB said the staffing was consistent with the schedule, and both controllers were qualified and current on all control positions at the airport.

Just prior to the accident, the controller-in-charge was coordinating the emergency response to a United Airlines flight on the other side of the airport. That flight had twice aborted takeoff and declared an emergency due to an odor onboard that was sickening flight attendants.

As that controller managed the emergency, the local controller took over giving instructions on the ground control radio frequency, as well as continuing his tower responsibilities, the NTSB noted.

A system designed to prevent ground collisions, called Airport Surface Detection Equipment, is installed at LaGuardia, but it did not alarm at the time of the collision, the report said.

“ASDE-X provides visual and aural alerts when it detects potential runway incursions or conflicts, giving controllers the ability to intervene before an accident occurs,” the NTSB said. The equipment did not provide a warning the night of the collision since the fire trucks did not have transponders and were only partially picked up by ground radar.

“Without transponder-equipped vehicles, the ASDE-X system could not uniquely identify each of the seven responding vehicles or reliably determine their positions, or tracks. As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1 (or any of the other vehicles in the group),” the NTSB said.

The report does not determine a probable cause for the collision. That will come when the NTSB issues its final report at the conclusion of the investigation.

CNN’s Pete Muntean contributed to this report.

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