By David Shepardson, Allison Lampert and Dan Catchpole
NEW YORK/MONTREAL, March 23 (Reuters) – Investigators probing the deadly collision of an Air Canada Express jet with a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport said on Monday they wanted to interview an air traffic controller who was juggling another emergency in the run-up to the crash.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters at LaGuardia that the controller would be one part of the investigation by the independent federal agency, which would “rule nothing out.”
The accident while landing, which killed both pilots and seriously injured another nine people, has revived concerns over limited air traffic control staffing at major U.S. airports.
Homendy said the collision shortly before midnight on Sunday happened during an overnight shift for the controller, who would typically be removed from duty after such an accident.
“It’s pretty traumatic for that air traffic controller as well,” she said. “We’ll want to interview that air traffic controller as well as others that were in the tower.”
U.S. air safety experts said communications between the plane that was landing, the controller and the trucks would be key areas of the investigation.
There were 80 runway incursions by vehicles or pedestrians during the quarter ended December 31, up from 54 in the same period a year earlier, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration data shows.
Air crashes typically are caused by multiple factors, and the NTSB said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder for analysis.
PRIOR EMERGENCY
Air traffic controllers make the decisions about when planes can land and take off, and when ground vehicles can enter runways. The controller who made the call for Air Canada flight 8646 to land had been trying to find a gate for a United Airlines flight that complained of a bad odor, according to a recording available on liveatc.net.
The United pilots decided not to fly and declared an emergency over the odor that had sickened flight attendants.
Fire trucks that had appeared to have been cleared by the same controller to cross Runway 4 at the airport were headed to the United flight as the Air Canada Express CRJ-900 jet operated by regional partner Jazz Aviation landed with 72 passengers and four crew.
“Stop, truck one, stop,” the controller said, shortly after approving passage across the runway. The arriving plane then hit the fire truck.
According to separate audio posted by liveatc.net, an unidentified controller who appears to be the one involved in the crash, told another pilot after the collision that he had been dealing with an emergency earlier.
“I messed up,” he said in a shaken voice.
The pilot of the other plane, which had seen the crash, responded “Nah man, you did the best you could.” The pilot had said the earlier incident “wasn’t good to watch.”
STAFFING LEVELS
Air traffic controllers routinely handle multiple flights, and four commercial pilots told Reuters it was not uncommon to have one controller covering both the ground and tower, two distinct air traffic control roles, at LaGuardia and other major metropolitan airports.
“The really more fundamental question is ‘What was the work schedule and sleep schedule of that controller and is fatigue an issue?'” said U.S. aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox.
Homendy said it was too soon to discuss staffing.
It was not clear what staffing was like at the airport when the accident occurred, but U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy dismissed concerns of understaffing.
Duffy told reporters at LaGuardia on Monday that the airport is well staffed with 33 air traffic controllers at a facility that has a target of 37. Reports that the controller was working alone on Sunday night were inaccurate, Duffy said.
In the hour before the Air Canada Express crash, 51 flights landed or left at LaGuardia – more than twice as many as the 23 flights scheduled during the hour of the crash, according to flight records from Flightradar24. The reason for the jump was not clear.
(Reporting By David Shepardson in New York, Allison Lampert in Montreal and Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Editing by Peter Henderson and Jamie Freed)
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