In the months preceding a tragic runway accident at LaGuardia Airport that claimed two lives on Sunday night, pilots had been sounding alarms about its perilous conditions.
One pilot took to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System last summer, issuing a stark plea for intervention at LaGuardia, expressing concern that a disaster was looming unless action was taken. “The pace of operations is building in LGA. The controllers are pushing the line,” the pilot cautioned, as highlighted in a CNN review of government records.
This warning pointed to a specific incident where air traffic controllers at the New York airport failed to adequately manage multiple aircraft, raising serious safety concerns.
Further, the report warned that on days with thunderstorms, LaGuardia’s conditions were reminiscent of those at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, prior to a tragic January 2025 collision. That incident involved an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter, resulting in the loss of 67 lives due to overcrowded airspace, sparking urgent demands for improvements in the nation’s air traffic control systems.
The report added that ‘on thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there’ – a reference to the January 2025 collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter over Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Washington DC.
That crash, caused by dangerously overcrowded airspace, killed a total of 67 people and led to urgent calls to fix America’s air traffic control systems.
But aviation experts and officials say that over a year later, little has been done to heed the pilot’s warnings about the potential for another deadly crash before Sunday’s collision between an Air Canada plane and a runway truck.
The late-night crash killed the Air Canada jet’s two pilots and hospitalized 41 others.
Terrified pilots have raised the alarm over LaGuardia’s problems with air traffic control and miscommunication long before a crash on its runway on Sunday claimed the lives of two people
The crash on Sunday night is not the first dangerous incident at LaGuardia in recent times, and a number of close calls and near disasters have been reported to the NASA system by concerned pilots.
This included just months ago in October, when two Delta Airlines jets collided on the taxiway, hospitalizing one person as the wing of one of the aircrafts was snapped off.
Air traffic controllers and pilots both say that LaGuardia is plagued by miscommunications and staffing issues, leaving passengers at one of America’s busiest airports worryingly exposed to potential disaster.
Previous incidents flagged in the system also include a December 2024 close call, where a plane came perilously close to smashing into another aircraft on the ground, blaming inaccurate instructions from air traffic control.
Sunday night’s crash bears eerie similarities to that incident and happened when an air traffic controller told a fire truck to cross a runway to inspect a United aircraft experiencing technical difficulties.
Moments later the unidentified air traffic controller begged the truck to stop, but it was too late and the vehicle collided with the Air Canada plane.
Months before that in July 2023, a pilot reported to the NASA system that two aircraft almost collided after air traffic controllers said one was cleared to cross a runway that another jet was landing on.
The report said air traffic controllers only realized their mistake at the last second, noting that it ‘issued a stop command just in time.’
Pilots have previously flagged a number of close calls at LaGuardia – including one in October 2024 when two Delta aircraft collided on the runway (pictured), snapping a wing and injuring one person
Air traffic controllers and pilots both say that LaGuardia is plagued by miscommunications and staffing issues, leaving passengers at one of America’s busiest airports unsafe. Pictured: The wrecked Air Canada jet following the crash on Sunday
It comes as the pilots killed in the crash on Sunday evening at LaGuardia were named by officials as Antoine Forest, 30, and his co-pilot Mackenzie Gunther.
The two men were tragically killed upon impact, but passengers praised the pilots for their ‘incredible reflexes’ that they believe saved dozens of lives.
Passenger Rebecca Liquori said she is ‘forever indebted’ to the pilots, saying their quick instincts to hit the brakes in the seconds before they hit the fire truck was heroic.
‘I feel like the pilots saved our lives,’ she told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. ‘They’re the reasons I was able to make it home safe to see my boys, and my heart goes out to their families.’
Clément Lelièvre, a French national, also told The Canadian Press how he felt the pilots brake ‘extremely hard’ as the plane touched down at around 11.45pm.
By doing so, he said he believes the pilots prevented further deaths.
Antoine Forest, 30, was killed upon impact when the Air Canada flight he was flying from Montreal collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia International Airport on Sunday night
The fire truck was completely destroyed by the wreck, but both firefighters were expected to survive
‘I don’t know the circumstances, but I think he kind of saved our lives because he must have had incredible reflexes,’ Lelièvre said.
As federal investigators now work to determine what may have caused the fatal collision, friends and family members remembered the two pilots for their dedication to aviation.
‘These were two young men at the start of their careers,’ Federal Aviation Administrator Brian Bedford said.
‘It’s an absolute tragedy that we’re sitting here with their loss.’
Forest, of Coteau-du-Lac in Quebec, was just 16 years old when he first took to the skies, his great-aunt Jeanette Gagnier told the Toronto Star.
She explained that when he was in Grade 11, Forest asked if he could stay with her in Ontario to attend school and learn more English so he could improve his chances at a career as a pilot.
‘He was always taking courses and flying,’ said Gagnier, whom Forest listed on his Facebook page as his grandmother. ‘He never stopped.’
Forest would go on to get a job as an assistant engineer with Canadian Helicopters Limited, before moving on to successive stints with other Quebec-based airplane services as an apprentice and a first officer, his LinkedIn shows.
He then listed himself as a first officer listed himself for Jazz Aviation, flying Air Canada Express out of Montreal, in 2022.
Meanwhile, Seneca Polytechnic Institute released a statement saying Gunther graduated from the school’s Honors Bachelor of Aviation Technology program in 2023 and joined Jazz Aviation through the company’s Pathways program, which allowed him to begin flying immediately after graduation.
‘Seneca sends our deepest condolences to Mr Gunther’s family and friends and to his former colleagues and professors,’ school officials said in a statement. ‘He will be deeply missed.’
