A veteran Fort Lauderdale airline pilot is speaking with CBS News Miami after surviving a 2000 runway collision, which he says was tragically similar to the deadly accident that took the lives of two Air Canada pilots and injured dozens of passengers and crew members at LaGuardia Airport late Sunday night.
Stewart Donaldson, 62, told CBS News Miami he will never forget what happened on July 8, 2000, when he was landing his Piper Cherokee 6 at Staniel Cay in the Bahamas. Donaldson’s plane struck a pickup truck that had driven onto the runway. The accident left the pilot with a broken back, and a passenger was hurt. Two others in the pickup truck were also seriously injured.
“I experienced the same thing as LaGuardia,” Donaldson said. “There were four people involved, and yes, it was a smaller airport and a smaller truck, but it was the exact same scenario, and all four of us lived.”
It took Donaldson a year to recover and another six months—a year and a half in total—to be able to walk again.
Donaldson said he has studied the LaGuardia accident, which occurred after a Port Authority fire truck was cleared to cross the runway. He believes the pilots did the best they could to avoid the collision.
“The airplane in their case was traveling at 113 knots, or 131 miles per hour,” he explained. “They did the best they could. It cost them their lives. I understand from what I heard on the news that they really laid on their brakes.”
Regarding the fire truck, Donaldson said, “As for the fire truck, why they didn’t look down the runway, or if they did, I do not know. It is all speculation.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has cautioned people against “pointing fingers” at controllers and saying distraction was involved, stating that many factors need to be examined. The NTSB has recovered the cockpit voice and flight data recorders and sent them to NTSB headquarters.Â
Donaldson speculated that preliminary findings could be released within the next 30 days.