NEW YORK CITY — An Air Canada plane collided with a fire truck on a runway at LaGuardia Airport on March 22, killing both pilots and injuring about 40 passengers and crew members. The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the crash on April 23, 2026.

Two air traffic controllers were on duty in the LaGuardia control tower at the time of the collision, with one acting as local controller and the other serving as both ground controller and controller-in-charge. The controller-in-charge was coordinating multiple issues, including communicating with firefighting crews on the ground, before the collision. The local controller took over transmitting air traffic instructions on both the ground control and local controller frequencies before the crash.

Air Canada's pilots were given clearance to land about 21 seconds before firefighting crews left the airport's fire station area to respond to an emergency. Forty seconds after the plane received its clearance, the lead fire truck attempted to contact the control tower to ask to cross the runway, but a simultaneous transmission obscured the call. A second attempt by the fire truck to contact the tower was made 34 seconds after the first attempt.

The convoy's Truck 1 moved to the front of the firefighting vehicles and waited at the taxiway intersection. The fire trucks were cleared to drive across the runway and began to do so less than 30 seconds before the crash. The trucks were instructed to stop for the first time about 20 seconds before the collision.

A Truck 1 crew member said he heard radio transmissions saying "stop stop stop" and later "Truck 1 stop stop stop" after the truck had already entered the runway. The second instruction to stop came roughly four seconds before the collision, after the plane's landing gear touched down. Runway lights designed to warn ground vehicles of landing or departing aircraft were functioning on the night of the crash.

The fire truck was traveling at 30 miles per hour at the time of the collision, and the plane's last recorded speed before impact was 104 miles per hour. The driver of the fire truck and the plane's pilot both attempted to swerve to avoid the collision seconds before impact.

Both pilots died in the crash, the two crew members in the fire truck were hospitalized, and roughly 40 passengers and crew members on the plane were injured. Air Canada's pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, have been credited with saving the lives of 72 passengers and two surviving crew members. No final cause will be determined until the final report, which is expected in 12 to 24 months.