NEW YORK – A potential violation of standard operating procedures may have contributed to the Air Canada plane accident at LaGuardia Airport in New York on the night of March 22, 2026, when a jet collided with a fire truck, killing both Canadian pilots. According to Reuters, a single air traffic controller may have been simultaneously managing both active runway traffic and ground operations, in violation of the tower’s rules.
LaGuardia Tower’s standard procedures specify that the roles of local controller (responsible for active runways and immediate airspace) and ground controller (responsible for aircraft and vehicle movements on taxiways) must never be “combined” before midnight, to prevent overload and reduce the risk of errors.
That night, however, according to Reuters (here their article) the local controller appears to have also performed the duties of the ground controller, handling an exceptional workload alone: between 10:00 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., 70 commercial flights took off or landed, well above the average of 53 flights in the same timeframe in recent years.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stated it is investigating the role of each controller at the time of the accident and the tower’s operational conditions. The inquiry will determine whether the combined roles and workload contributed to the fatal error, amid an already critical context of air traffic controller shortages in the United States.
Several controllers have noted that in high-traffic situations, it is common to call in reinforcements or extend shifts—measures that that night would not have been sufficient to manage the exceptional flight volume, leaving the tower controller to handle everything alone.
In summary, the accident highlights how procedure violations and staffing shortages can significantly increase risks at the busiest airports, with potentially fatal consequences, as at LaGuardia.
In the pic above, NTSB investigators walk the scene of the Mar. 22 collision between an Air Canada Express plane and a firefighting vehicle on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport (photo: National Transportation Safety Board – US, from Twitter X – @NTSB_Newsroom)
