Disturbing images have emerged, capturing the severe damage to an Air Canada flight that was involved in a deadly collision with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport. These images reveal the aircraft’s nose and cockpit were completely sheared off.
Obtained exclusively by The Post, the images depict the wreckage of Air Canada Express Flight 8646. The flight, en route from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew members aboard, crashed into a Port Authority fire truck at the Queens airport at approximately 11:40 p.m.
Photographs taken when the CRJ-900 aircraft was moved to a hangar for passengers to retrieve their belongings on Wednesday show the cockpit’s devastation. The two pilots, who were in control of the plane at the time of the collision on Runway 4, suffered fatal injuries as the cockpit was obliterated.
Pilots Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther tragically lost their lives upon impact.
Despite the chaos, around 40 individuals sustained injuries, including a flight attendant who astonishingly survived being thrown 300 feet. Thanks to the quick actions of the pilots, all those injured are expected to recover. Remarkably, two Port Authority officers inside the fire truck endured the incident without life-threatening injuries.
These newly released photos offer the most detailed view yet of the catastrophic damage inflicted on the aircraft in this tragic accident.
The aisle of the plane and shredded wires spill out of the decapitated aircraft, while the cockpit is completely obliterated, and the front rows are dinged up in the images. The damage continues to the underbelly of the jet, where the front landing gear and wheels are nonexistent.
The plane wreck remained on view on the runway Tuesday for other horrified passengers to see as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sifted through the debris.
Heartstopping audio posted online revealed that a tower crew realized too late that the truck and plane were about to collide after both were given the all clear for the same runway.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop!” a controller pleaded with the truck over the radio. “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop! Stop, Truck 1! Stop!”
A controller can be heard later in the audio admitting, “I messed up.”
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters at a Tuesday press conference that two personnel in the control tower were performing multiple roles at the time, which is standard procedure at LaGuardia for the midnight shift they were working.
But one of them cleared the emergency vehicle to cross the runway to respond to an incident on another plane just as the Air Canada jet was landing, Homendy revealed.
Latest coverage on the deadly Air Canada crash at LaGuardia Airport
“We know that that controller was still on duty for several minutes afterwards. Normally, they would be relieved,” she said.
Homendy said Tuesday on Fox and Friends it was “too early” to solely blame the air traffic controller overheard in the audio and that the agency was investigating “multiple failures.”
