An Air Canada Jet sits on the runway at LaGuardia Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, after colliding with a Port Authority aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle in New York.
(AP Photo/Ryan Murphy
)
New York’s LaGuardia Airport was shut down Monday after an Air Canada jet struck a fire truck while landing late Sunday night. The two pilots of the regional jet were killed, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed.
The nose of the plane was crushed in the collision that occurred about 11:40 p.m. EDT. Seventy-two passengers and four crew members were on the plane, said Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority, in a news conference. Two officers were on the fire truck that was responding to a separate incident when the collision occurred.
Forty-one people were taken to a hospital, 32 were released but others remain hospitalized with serious injuries. Garcia said the two officers were in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.
The Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada originated at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the major airport serving Montreal.
A Port Authority aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle lays on its side off of runway 4 after colliding with an Air Canada jet after it landed at LaGuardia Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in New York.
(AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
In the moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard on a radio transmission giving clearance to a vehicle to cross part of the tarmac, then trying to stop it.
“Stop, Truck 1. Stop,” the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.
The fire truck was traveling across the runway to respond to a separate incident aboard a United Airlines flight, whose pilot had reported “an issue with odor,” said Garcia, who deferred additional questions about the sequence of events leading up to the crash to the NTSB.
Weather observations from LaGuardia did not raise any obvious red flags, says weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. There was light rain, visibility of 4 miles and a temperature of 46 degrees with NNE winds at 6 mph, at the time of the collision. “Planes taxi, take off and land in such conditions every day in multiple airports around the world,” Erdman said.
LaGuardia Airport will stay closed until at least 2 p.m. EDT on Monday as the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the incident.
The airport shutdown is sure to add to the travel woes across the country.
Early Monday, some passengers who had arrived at LaGuardia hours before their flights hoping to beat security lines during the ongoing government funding lapse straggled out of the airport, rebooked for Tuesday. Others were hastening to other airports, as far as Long Island MacArthur in suburban Ronkonkoma, to try to catch their flights.
At least 916 flights were canceled nationwide Monday morning, with nearly 7,000 flights delayed, according to the flight tracking website, FlightAware.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.