NTSB notes concerns with midnight shift for air traffic controllers and lack of transponders on vehicles
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) is warning about a “very concerning” rise in runway incursions at home as investigators probe a deadly Air Canada Jazz crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport that killed two young Canadian pilots.
TSB chair Yoann Marier said a three‑person Canadian team is now on the ground in New York, working alongside the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Under international rules, the U.S. leads the investigation, but Canada participates as the state of the operator.
“Our investigators will be there to assist them and essentially act as a conduit between what is being done in the U.S. and any Canadian interest in the investigation,” Marier said in an interview with Canadian Occupational Safety.
The Canadian team will examine the wreckage, review evidence and later comment on the NTSB’s draft report “to provide our point of view on the investigation.”
Two young Canadian pilots killed
The crash occurred late Sunday, March 22, when Air Canada Express Flight 8646, a Bombardier CRJ‑900 operated by Jazz Aviation, struck a Port Authority firefighting truck while landing on Runway 4 at LaGuardia.
Officials have not yet formally named the victims, but family members and a Canadian college have identified the two pilots as Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest, both Canadian and early in their careers.
They were the only fatalities among roughly 70–76 people on board; about 40 passengers and crew, along with two firefighters in the truck, were taken to hospital with injuries.
It’s the first fatal crash at LaGuardia in 34 years.
New video
— Mohit Suryavanshi (@SaffronSyndcate) March 23, 2026
shows deadly crash at LaGuardia airport
Air Canada flight crashing into rescue truck at New York airport https://t.co/0tMcISRtl9 pic.twitter.com/DFKypJ7ZHe
Runway incursions already on TSB watch list
In the final seconds before impact, a controller cleared the firefighting convoy across the active runway and then, seeing the Air Canada jet about to land, tried to reverse course: “Sorry, Truck 1 … Stop. Stop. Stop, Truck 1. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.”
Moments after the collision, a controller was recorded telling another, “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
Marier would not comment on specific emerging evidence from New York, including detailed cockpit‑voice‑recorder timelines and questions about fire‑truck transponders and tower staffing raised by NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy.
But he stressed that the underlying safety issue is painfully familiar.
“Runway incursions is an issue that we have been talking about at the TSB for a long, long time,” he said. “It’s been on our watch list since 2010. And this occurrence is a tragic example of a runway incursion.”
Canada records hundreds of runway incursions every year, most without collision. But 2024 marked the worst year in a decade and a half. “It is a very concerning trend that we are actively looking at,” said Marier.
“Every stakeholder” on the hook
Reducing those numbers, he stressed, will require co‑ordinated action by regulators, airports, NAV CANADA and operators.
“It’s a very complex issue because it requires action by every stakeholder,” he said. “They all have to collaborate to make this trend go down.”
For safety leaders, that means looking hard at how people, procedures and technology interact on and around active runways.
Airport‑level defences and missing transponders
Marier pointed to airport‑level defences as a priority.
“What we’re looking at maybe more in terms of concrete action are airport‑level defenses, so better signage to increase the awareness of people operating on the airport,” he said.
He also wants to see wider deployment of technology to give both controllers and pilots a clearer picture of who and what is moving on the airfield.
“There are also a lot of technologies out there that are available to help controllers and even pilots be more aware of their surroundings to avoid these types of occurrences,” he said.
In her own briefing, Homendy highlighted a critical gap at LaGuardia: “We have no indication there were transponders on any of the trucks,” she said, noting that at other airports “there are transponders on other trucks … in this case, they did not have transponders.”
Both officials pointed to tower‑based surveillance tools as another key defence. At many airports, controllers work high above the field with generally good sightlines, but at night or in poor weather their “visual ranges can be very limited,” Marier noted, making electronic systems “of great help” in tracking movements and intervening when something unexpected happens.
Night shift and fatigue in the spotlight
Homendy has also put LaGuardia’s midnight‑shift staffing under scrutiny. She said only two people were in the tower cab at the time of the collision, the local controller and controller‑in‑charge. She said this is standard operating procedure for the midnight shift at LaGuardia and is also common practice at other airports across the U.S.
Homendy noted the midnight shift is one “we have many times at the NTSB raised concerns about with respect to fatigue,” even though investigators have “no indication that was a factor here” at this stage.
In Canada, the TSB’s current fatigue focus is on pilots rather than controllers.
“Fatigue is an issue that is on our watchlist … but from the TSB’s point of view, we’re really focusing on pilot fatigue,” Marier said. “Air traffic controller fatigue is not something that we have looked at in a lot of detail.”
However, if fatigue emerges as a factor in the LaGuardia crash, “we’ll certainly keep our eye on it,” he added.
For now, Marier said, it is “very early in the investigation,” and Canadian officials will be relying on the NTSB’s regular public updates as more details emerge.
