Air Traffic Audio Appears to Show Tower Was Dealing With Incident Before Crash
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Several minutes after the collision, a controller told the pilot of a Frontier jet that “we were dealing with an emergency earlier,” according to audio reviewed by The New York Times.
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Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Supported by SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Air Traffic Audio Appears to Show Tower Was Dealing With Incident Before Crash Several minutes after the collision, a controller told the pilot of a Frontier jet that “we were dealing with an emergency earlier,” according to audio reviewed by The New York Times. Listen · 2:35 min Share full article 0 By Karoun Demirjian Reporting from Washington March 23, 2026, 11:55 a.m. ET Audio from the air traffic tower at LaGuardia Airport indicated that a controller appeared to be distracted when an Air Canada jet struck a Port Authority fire truck, killing the two pilots. Several minutes after the collision Sunday night, a controller at the airport told the pilot of a Frontier jet that the airport was closed until further notice and that “we were dealing with an emergency earlier,” according to air traffic control audio posted on the site LiveATC.net, which was reviewed by The New York Times. It was unclear what emergency the controller was referring to, but Kathryn Garcia, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and operates LaGuardia, said air traffic controllers were responding to an aircraft whose pilot, after multiple attempts at takeoff, had requested help before the Air Canada crash. The National Transportation Safety Board said it had started an investigation. LaGuardia remains closed as of late Monday morning. It was not clear how many controllers were in the tower at LaGuardia around 11:37 p.m. Sunday night when the crash appears to have occurred. On the audio stream from late Sunday, a controller can be heard yelling “stop, Truck 1, stop,” to a fire truck, just seconds after giving it clearance to cross Runway 4, where the Air Canada plane had just landed. The Federal Aviation Administration said determining how many controllers were in the tower on Sunday night would be part of the N.T.S.B.’s investigation. But aviation experts said the tower likely had few...
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