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One of two pilots killed in a collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport Sunday earned his wings at an Ontario college, CBC News has learned.
The pilots have been identified as Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, according to Radio-Canada sources.
Gunther, who was first officer on the flight, graduated from Seneca College’s aviation technology program in 2023, according to an online memoriam posted on the school’s website this week. The program is based out of Peterborough, Ont.
The two men were killed when Air Canada Express Flight 8646 — a CRJ-900 operated by Jazz Aviation that was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal to New York — collided with a Port Authority fire truck crossing the runway as the plane landed Sunday night. More than 40 people were taken to hospital after the incident.
WATCH | How an Air Canada plane collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia:
The moment a plane smashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport | About That
Air Canada Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of others. Andrew Chang breaks down what we know about the crash from air traffic control audio and insight from aviation experts.
Images provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
Gunther joined Jazz Aviation immediately after graduating from Seneca, according to the school’s memoriam. Seneca campuses will fly flags at half-mast Tuesday to honour his memory.
“Seneca sends our deepest condolences to Mr. Gunther’s family and friends, and to his former colleagues and professors. He will be deeply missed,” the memoriam read.
Multiple students in Seneca’s flight services program in North York say the news has left them shaken.
“We the feel the loss of a student, and a pilot in this case, that was part of our community,” said Venhy Cortez, who is currently doing a placement with Porter Airlines.
Leena Bah, another student who didn’t know Gunther personally, said she and her classmates are thinking of his family now, and she hopes the tragedy will at least lead to safety improvements to prevent something similar from happening again.
“It’s really hard to process it,” said Bah. “I feel fear, honestly, thinking that it could happen to anyone … they were both doing their jobs.”
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Monday it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the jet, and investigators would begin work on the flight data recorder Tuesday.