The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released an audio recording of the last 3 minutes before the crash involving an Air Canada plane and a truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Sunday (22).
The pilot and co-pilot of Flight 8646 were killed in the accident. Another 40 people were injured in the collision with a fire truck.
NTSB senior aviation investigator Doug Brazy shared a timeline Tuesday (24) of the last 3 minutes before impact.
3 minutes and 7 seconds before the plane from Montreal touched down in New York, approach control instructed the plane to contact the LaGuardia Tower.
The crew contacted the airport’s control tower, which cleared the plane to land on runway 4, 2 minutes and 27 seconds before the accident. The plane was number two in the landing queue.
At 1 minute 26 seconds into the recording, the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System issued an electronic warning “1,000”, indicating that the aircraft is 1,000 feet above the ground.
An airport vehicle sent a radio transmission to the tower, but the communication was interrupted by another radio transmission at 1 minute and 3 seconds into the recording.
At the same time as the aircraft approached runway 4, the fire truck was given permission to cross the same runway 25 seconds before the collision.
12 seconds before, the tower instructed a Frontier Airlines plane to hold position. 9 seconds before, the fire engine was instructed to stop. According to Doug Brazy, you can hear the sound of the landing gear hitting the ground.
The recording ended after one pilot transferred control from one pilot to the other.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy added that the agency does not yet know which air traffic controller was in charge of ground operations at the New York airport at the time.
+Watch the full audio recording of the Air Canada crash
Source and images: Wikimedia Commons. This content is created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
