The American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released an audio recording of the last 3 minutes before the accident 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 died in the accident. A further 40 people were injured in the collision with a fire engine.
NTSB senior aviation investigator Doug Brazy on Tuesday (24) shared a timeline of the last 3 minutes before impact.
3 minutes and 7 seconds before the plane from Montreal landed in New York, approach control instructed the plane to contact the LaGuardia Tower.
The crew contacted the control tower, which gave the aircraft permission to land on the runway 4.2 minutes and 27 seconds before the accident. The plane was second in line for landing.
At 1 minute 26 seconds into the recording, the enhanced ground proximity warning system gave an electronic warning “1,000”, indicating that the aircraft is 1,000 feet above the ground.
An airport vehicle sent a radio message to the tower, but the communication was interrupted by another radio transmission at 1 minute 3 seconds into the recording.
At the same time as the aircraft was approaching 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 flight 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 a pilot transferred control from one pilot to the other.
NTSB director Jennifer Homendy added that the agency does not yet know which air traffic controller was responsible for the ground movements 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 has been created with the help of KI and reviewed by the editors.
