Air traffic control audio captured the dramatic radio traffic before and after an Air Canada Express jet collided with a fire truck on a runway at New York's LaGuardia airport late on Sunday, March 22, an accident that killed two pilots and injured dozens of others.
The Air Canada Express CRJ‑900, operated by Jazz Aviation, was arriving from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew members on board when it collided with a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle shortly before 11:40 p.m., according to airport officials.
Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said at a news conference that the fire truck was responding to a separate incident involving a United Airlines flight that had reported an odor on board.
Garcia said 41 passengers and crew members were transported to hospitals. Thirty‑two have since been released, while others remain hospitalized with serious injuries. Two Port Authority officers who were inside the fire truck were also injured and remain hospitalized with non‑life‑threatening injuries, she said.
Minutes before the collision, air traffic control audio posted by LiveATC.net captured discussions about the United Airlines odor emergency, including controllers noting that emergency vehicles were already responding, Reuters reported. Additional recordings from before and after the crash document attempts by controllers to communicate with both the passenger jet and the fire truck in the moments leading up to the collision.
Air traffic control audio: 'Stop, stop, stop'
Recorded air traffic audio from before and after the crash caught the moment air traffic controllers tried to stop the truck and passenger jet from colliding. According to the audio, an air traffic controller cleared a fire truck to cross Runway 4 at taxiway 'Delta', where the collision occurred.
Shortly after, an air traffic controller repeatedly tries to stop the vehicle, saying "Stop, stop, stop, truck one, stop, truck one, stop."
The aircraft struck the fire vehicle at a speed of about 24 mph, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, which last recorded data at 11:37 p.m. ET, Reuters reported.
Following the collision, an air traffic controller can be heard saying LaGuardia Airport is going to be closed and relays the information to an apparent other flight, Frontier 4195, which was slated to depart the airport for Miami at 10:55 p.m., according to Flightradar24. That flight responds to air traffic control in the recording, saying "That wasn’t good to watch."
"I tried to reach out to my staff, and we were dealing with an emergency earlier," the air traffic controller said in response. "I messed up."It was not immediately clear what the controller meant by messing up. The Frontier 4195 flight then responded to the air traffic controller, saying "No, man, you did the best you could." The audio continues with air traffic controllers telling other planes the airport would be closed all night.
LaGuardia temporarily closed, flights canceled
LaGuardia Airport will be closed until at least 2 p.m. ET on March 23, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's Garcia said. The National Transportation Safety Board is at the scene and will be leading the investigation. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration will send a team to support the NTSB investigation.
About 585 flights into or out of the airport have been canceled on Monday, according to the tracking website FlightAware.
The crash comes as some airports are already swamped with long security wait times and travel disruptions caused by the partial government shutdown. Absences among Transportation Security Administration workers reached their highest level over the weekend since the partial shutdown began five weeks ago, leaving tens of thousands of workers without pay, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Beyond that, the collision marks the latest aviation incident after 2025 saw multiple deadly crashes across the United States, including a November 2025 UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky that killed 15 people and the January 2025 collision over the Potomac River between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people.
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