Laurie Garrow, an aviation expert, calls the moments leading up to the fatal crash a "particularly stressful situation"
Credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- A passenger jet and a firetruck collided at LaGuardia Airport in New York City on March 22, leaving two dead and several injured
- Aviation experts tell PEOPLE that multiple factors may have led to the crash, including human error
- “We make mistakes in life when there’s multiple pressures pushing on us,” Capt. Mike Coffield, a former commercial pilot, tells PEOPLE
After a passenger plane struck a firetruck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, aviation experts share the various “pressures” that may have led to fatal human error.
“It's sort of a combination of factors under a particularly stressful situation, and one that's also not normal,” Laurie Garrow, an aviation expert, tells PEOPLE of the deadly crash at LaGuardia Airport on the night of Sunday, March 22, that left two dead and dozens injured.
“You're normally not sending firetrucks out to handle an emergency situation,” Garrow adds.
On Sunday night, around 11:40 p.m. local time, Air Canada Flight 8646 collided with a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey firetruck that was responding to a separate incident. Two pilots died, and 41 passengers and crew members were hospitalized, a Port Authority spokesperson previously confirmed to PEOPLE. Thirty-two of the victims were later released, though others had sustained serious injuries, The New York Times reported.
There were two people on the firetruck, officials have said. They were initially given clearance to cross the runway and then warned to "stop" by air traffic control, audio shows. It remains unclear if the firetruck crew saw the incoming plane and what choices they made in the moments before the collision.
Air Canada previously said in a statement that they were "deeply saddened by the loss of two employees and are working to support family members and employees at this difficult time."
LaGuardia was closed until Monday at 2 p.m., according to the latest update on social media. The airport warned travelers to “expect delays and/or cancellations,” further adding to travel difficulties during the partial government shutdown.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration is ongoing.
Following the crash, Capt. Mike Coffield, a former commercial pilot and the CEO of KM Cargo, tells PEOPLE that several factors may have led to the fatal incident. Located in Queens, LaGuardia is the smaller of the city’s major airports, which has a “noise abatement curfew” from midnight to 6 a.m., meaning that “traffic has to be into LaGuardia and land,” Coffield said.
As midnight approached, controllers responded to an emergency before the passenger jet collided with the firetruck. Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority, said that a pilot of a separate aircraft had attempted to take off several times before requesting assistance, according to the Times.
Two employees could be heard talking about the crash in audio from air traffic control.
Credit: Getty
“I got the word that we’re gonna be closed for a little while,” one employee said. Another said, “That wasn’t good to watch.”
The first then said, “Yeah, I know. I was there. I was trying to reach out to ‘em to stop. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
His colleague assured him, “Nah, man, you did the best you could.”.”
Coffield believes that the “ambient light and the reflection of the city, the reflection of the airport” may have prevented the pilots from seeing the emergency vehicle as the Air Canada aircraft landed.
“That's a short runway at LaGuardia, and 2,000 feet of that are on piers out over the water,” Coffield says. “So when that crew broke out of those clouds, I don't think they saw the truck.”
While the cause of the crash is still under investigation, Garrow says that air traffic control “may have briefly lost track of the fact that the Air Canada flight was incoming.”
“By the time they realized that both had received clearance, they did tell the firetruck to stop,” she continues. “But firetrucks are very heavy, very difficult to stop quickly, and plus they're responding to [an] emergency, so they go fast.”
Within a minute, the plane slowed from approximately 151 miles per hour to 24 miles per hour after it landed, according to the Times. But it wasn’t enough to stop the collision.
Once the NTSB and FAA conclude the investigation, Coffield hopes that officials will allow an emergency on the field to take precedence over a possible curfew.
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“That relieves pressure. We make mistakes in life when there's multiple pressures pushing on us, whether we know it or [it’s] perceived,” he says. “And so I think that's what we need to look at."
Garrow expects that investigators will look into the ways to re-evaluate the “information load on the air traffic controllers,” as well as protocols and procedures “to help prevent something from happening like this in the future.”
The FAA did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
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