In 2026, with how much money their is in aviation, it seems wild to not have digitized this ages ago. The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances.
That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. And there's pretty much no way to make ATC's job not stressful, its inherently stressful. Taking out how much of their job is held in the current operators mind versus being 'committed' seems like low hanging fruit 30 years ago.
The whole system's just begging for human error to occur. There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs.
ATC recording on https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php
Fire truck was cleared to cross and then told to stop. I'm not sure if they were the only controller working at the time, they continued working after the incident which seems unusual; my understanding is normally they'd be relieved by another controller.
Was curious if ground vehicles at airports also use transponders to communicate position to the radio tower, and it turns out the FAA put out a report last year on potential solutions to avoid this exact situation:
Emergency vehicles were en route to another emergency in progress on the other runway. Sadly it sounds like a fire truck was cleared to cross the active runway moments before the CRJ landed. By the time the controller realized that mistake it was too late.
Captain Steve breakdown: https://youtu.be/Hx-GFeErXD8?si=iND_BkDrtGNapB7Q His videos are pretty insightful and always respectful. Highly recommended. Expect him to have new videos as more information becomes available.
> Captain and first officer are reported to have died in the accident, two fire fighters on board of the truck received serious injuries, 13 passengers received injuries.
Either the number of big airline incidents around the world grew in the last 24 months or reporting on it became more popular. I wonder how much people get hurt relative to number that fly now.
I'm curious about what kind of visualization does the ATC have at the disposal about the current occupancy of the individual tarmac segments? I'd assume if an airplane is approaching for landing on a specific runway, that runway should have been clearly marked as restricted for access until the plane would actually land and clear it?
> a firefighting truck was responding to a separate incident on a flight that had aborted its takeoff and reported a strange odour on board. Air traffic control recordings suggested the odour on the plane had made some flight attendants feel ill.
Not making light of this, but I imagine there is another story of the person who had some strange scented product that led the flight attendants to play it safe and phone it in. There may very be someone whose strong cologne or forgetfulness to leave a chemical at home resulted in 2 deaths :(
Tower is human, gets tired, gets hungry; Tower made a mistake.
If Tower had some help, maybe an AI or maybe another set of ears, the tragedy could have been avoided.
An LLM monitoring instructions could easily have identified the mistake and alerted the ATC in time to save the situation. There was plenty of time to correct the mistake.
Are the increased number of air incidents since Dec 2024 reflective of anything real or is it more attention on something? Brigida v. USDOT comes to mind but doesn't seem relevant. I'm sure we could all construct a chain of "this thing happened that caused that which caused this" and so on, but I'm curious if someone has done the effort to see whether such a chain is defensible.
Also, did the pilots die in the collision or in some sort of aftermath? The cockpit looks absolutely smashed.
Such a terrible avoidable accident, on top of the absolute chaos happening inside the airports. In a normal timeline, Donald Trump would've died in obscurity years ago
It should be noted that aircraft and all other vehicle and personel movements on an airport are controlled from the airtraffic control tower by air traffic controllers or
directly by individual flaggers, as directed from the tower.
Or at least thats the way it is supposed to work, and of course the operation at a place like LaGuardia is more complex, and will have specialists and multiple zones.
What will put an extra edge on this is the
whole ICE thing, and airport chaos pulling the roof down.
As long as the cost of an accident is lower than the cost of fixing the system this will continue to happen.
This is one of many examples of why capitalism needs to be kept in check with democratic government oversight. Sometimes the financial incentives are not high enough to warrant changing the system.
So the truck just crosses a runway because the ground controller said it was OK? Do ground vehicle drivers not take a half a second to look both ways before crossing a runway? It would have prevented this. Safely through redundant checks.
Introduce a foreign object onto the runway and it will inevitably collide with an aircraft. The fire trucks aren't part of the airport traffic management system, their sudden presence is bound to lead to problems eventually.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the truck has a single radio (airplanes always have two) and was constantly switching between ATC and fire house frequencies. The probably never heard the "stop, stop, stop stop.."
It would also not surprise me if airports previously had dedicated fire services, which have since been outsourced for cost reasons.
Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at LaGuardia
(bbc.com)414 points by mememememememo 23 March 2026 | 652 comments
Comments
That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. And there's pretty much no way to make ATC's job not stressful, its inherently stressful. Taking out how much of their job is held in the current operators mind versus being 'committed' seems like low hanging fruit 30 years ago.
The whole system's just begging for human error to occur. There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs.
https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/certalerts/part_...
> Captain and first officer are reported to have died in the accident, two fire fighters on board of the truck received serious injuries, 13 passengers received injuries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyTsnsWHoxc
ATC audio
make a mistake, recognize it, and then have to continue on your job, knowing you likely just killed people, because if you don't others will die.
The weight of some jobs is immense, and our civilization relies upon workers to shoulder the burden everyday.
Not making light of this, but I imagine there is another story of the person who had some strange scented product that led the flight attendants to play it safe and phone it in. There may very be someone whose strong cologne or forgetfulness to leave a chemical at home resulted in 2 deaths :(
Probably good here instead of seperate submission.
If Tower had some help, maybe an AI or maybe another set of ears, the tragedy could have been avoided.
An LLM monitoring instructions could easily have identified the mistake and alerted the ATC in time to save the situation. There was plenty of time to correct the mistake.
Also, did the pilots die in the collision or in some sort of aftermath? The cockpit looks absolutely smashed.
Let's get the important parts out of the way first: We in charge have taken care of optics, with regard to our offices.
Oh, and we're going to contact families eventually.
This is one of many examples of why capitalism needs to be kept in check with democratic government oversight. Sometimes the financial incentives are not high enough to warrant changing the system.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the truck has a single radio (airplanes always have two) and was constantly switching between ATC and fire house frequencies. The probably never heard the "stop, stop, stop stop.."
It would also not surprise me if airports previously had dedicated fire services, which have since been outsourced for cost reasons.