“These were two young people at the beginning of their careers, so it’s an absolute tragedy,” said FAA Administrator Bran Bedford. Le Journal de Montréal reported on the identity. He came from Cocteau-du-Lac in the province of Quebec.
The crash at LaGuardia Airport was described by the BBC’s Rebecca Liquori of Montreal: “We encountered a lot of turbulence on the way down. Then they landed very hard. Everyone felt it. It was like the plane was jerking. I heard the pilots trying to apply the brakes to avoid a collision. A few seconds later there was a very loud bang. Everyone in their seats was jerked.”
“I’m just happy to be alive. I never would have imagined that the hour-long flight I’ve taken countless times would end like this,” said Liquori.
Another passenger on board, Jack Cabot, described the chaos after the impact: “We were going for a normal landing. Immediately we hit something and there was chaos. Everyone was cowering and everyone was screaming.”
Liquoriová added that the passengers then helped each other to get out of the plane onto the wing.
Like when they cut the plane
23-year-old Leo Medina saw the collision from the deck of another plane: “We were about a hundred meters away. It was like the plane was cut in half.”
After the crash, the cockpit was completely destroyed and partially torn off. The flight attendant strapped to the emergency folding seat was also ejected from it. She survived, suffered more serious injuries, which were not life-threatening.
US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who visited the scene of the tragedy, emphasized the importance of using seat belts not only in airplanes, but in all means of transportation: “As you can see after last night, they save lives.”
After the crash, there was chaos and people from other flights had to stay at the airport for more than twelve hours. The airport was closed.
The investigation is focused on black boxes
The accident is already being investigated by an independent team of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), its chairwoman Jennifer Homendy confirmed on Monday. According to her, records from black boxes that were not damaged will mainly be analysed. She added that an on-site inspection of the debris, of which there is a huge amount, has already been carried out.
She mentioned that it was difficult to get all the investigators to the place because of the difficulty in checking in passengers. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is one of the organizations without money due to unapproved funding from the Department of Homeland Security.
“We have one air traffic control specialist who waited in line for TSA screening for three hours before we called Houston and asked them to let her through so we could get her here.”
The air traffic control specialist is key to this investigation, as it is suspected that the dispatcher made a mistake and allowed a fire truck headed for another incident to cross runway 04, where the Air Canada plane was landing.
There was apparently only one flight controller on the tower at the time of the accident, who dealt with traffic in the air and on the ground at the same time, which is not unusual due to the lack of controllers. But it could lead to a misunderstanding, two experts on air transport and its management told the BBC.
