New York, New York - Multiple communication failures and a lack of proper equipment were behind a fatal collision between a fire truck and an Air Canada Express plane on the runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport, according to a preliminary investigation report published Thursday by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The March 22 crash killed the two pilots aboard the CRJ-900 aircraft – operated by Jazz Aviation for Air Canada – and sent over 40 people to the hospital.
The preliminary investigation found that one of the most egregious errors occurred when air traffic controllers gave clearance to the fire truck crew to cross the runway while the jet was approaching.
An air traffic controller realized the mistake a few seconds later, telling the fire crew to "stop stop stop."
But the NTSB investigation said one of the two occupants of the truck "did not know who that transmission was intended for."
"He subsequently heard 'Truck 1 stop stop stop' and realized it was for them and subsequently noticed that they had entered the runway," the report said.
It said another factor was the lack of a transponder on the fire engine.
Having a transponder on board would have automatically alerted air traffic controllers that the aircraft and the truck were on a possible collision course, according to investigators.
Because there was no such device, "the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1...and did not predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane," the report said.
The full NTSB investigation, which can take up to a year, is underway, and a final report remains pending.