Pilots had repeatedly raised safety concerns at New York's LaGuardia Airport in the two years before a deadly crash on Sunday that killed two pilots and injured dozens of passengers.
Prior Pilot Warnings
A CNN review of government records shows pilots submitted at least a dozen reports to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, highlighting miscommunication and air traffic control errors. One pilot urgently wrote, "Please do something," describing a near miss where controllers failed to provide proper guidance for multiple aircraft. The pilot warned that operations at LGA were intensifying, comparing it to Washington National Airport before its January 2025 mid-air collision.
The Sunday Crash Incident
On Sunday, an Air Canada plane collided with a fire truck on a LaGuardia runway at high speed. An air traffic controller had cleared the fire truck to cross and frantically attempted to stop it moments before impact, but it was too late. The controller later admitted over radio that he had been "dealing with an emergency earlier" and "messed up."