Staffing concerns raised after plane hit fire truck at LaGuardia | US | News
Federal investigators have raised serious concerns about personnel practices at LaGuardia Airport, finding that two air traffic controllers on duty when the Air Canada plane crashed into a fire truck were carrying out the work of several people between them.
Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, announced the findings at a news conference Tuesday, saying that at least one of the two controllers in the tower was multitasking during the Sunday night crash that killed both pilots.
Homendy was careful to focus on systemic failures rather than individual blame.
“I would caution controllers that there is finger pointing and distraction involved. This is a heavy workload environment,” he reportedly said.
He acknowledged that it was common practice for fewer controllers to multitask during night shifts, according to reports — but said LaGuardia’s extraordinarily busy airspace made him doubt whether the approach was appropriate there.
“That’s definitely something we’ll look at as part of this investigation: Does this make sense? Why would it make sense at LaGuardia?” he said.
What was the tower’s staff like?
The tower’s two-man crew shared responsibilities that stretched far beyond what those roles typically entail, the news site npr.org reported. One manages runway traffic and the area of sky immediately above the airport, while the other, nominally the overall security commander, takes on additional duties as customs delivery controller, the job responsible for pushing back aircraft and allowing them to take off, the report said.
Based on the evidence collected so far, it remains unclear whether it is the runway controller or the general safety commander who also undertakes the ground controller’s function of tracking vehicles moving on taxiways.
“Of course, I can tell you that our air traffic control team has expressed for years that this is a concern to them,” Homendy said.
Homendy reportedly refrained from suggesting that fatigue played a role in Sunday’s crash, but emphasized that the NTSB has a long history of sounding the alarm about fatigue during the midnight shift.
“The midnight shift, as a reminder, is a work at the NTSB where we have raised concerns about fatigue many times,” Homendy told reporters. he said. “We have no indication that this is a factor here, but it is a change we have focused on in past research.”
‘Stop, stop, stop’
On Monday, the Express reported how the final moments before the crash were captured on footage from the control tower. A controller is heard allowing a vehicle identified as the first truck to cross the fourth runway before almost immediately reversing the instruction. The calmness of the first transmission is then completely disrupted; When the situation is resolved, the controller’s voice turns into a shout.
The controller shouted, “Stop, stop, stop, truck one, stop.”
Accounts from the family of one of the survivors make the human cost of the conflict even clearer. A Jazz Aviation flight attendant operating the CRJ-900 was thrown out of the wreckage; He landed more than 300 meters from the point of impact, still strapped into his seat.
Solange Tremblay, originally from Quebec, was one of nine passengers and crew taken to hospital following the incident. Her daughter told TVA News that her mother’s survival was miraculous and confirmed that she had multiple broken bones but was stable.
