LaGuardia Pilots Warned of Safety Issues Months Before Fatal Crash

Late on the night of March 22, 2026, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 touched down on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport in New York, arriving from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew members aboard. The Bombardier CRJ-900 regional jet was still rolling at between 93 and 105 miles per hour when it struck a Port Authority fire truck that had been cleared to cross the same runway moments earlier [1][2]. The cockpit and forward fuselage were destroyed on impact. Both pilots — Captain Antoine Forest, 30, of Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec, and First Officer MacKenzie Gunther — were killed [3]. Forty-one people were transported to area hospitals, including two Port Authority officers on the fire truck who suffered broken bones [4].

The crash was LaGuardia's first fatal incident in more than 34 years [5]. But it was not without warning. A CNN review of government records found that pilots had raised alarms about air traffic control errors, near-misses, and mounting operational pressure at LaGuardia for at least two years before the collision [6].

The Warnings Nobody Acted On

In the summer of 2025, a pilot filed a report to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) — a confidential, voluntary database where aviation professionals can document safety concerns without fear of disciplinary action — describing a close call at LaGuardia in which air traffic controllers failed to provide appropriate guidance about multiple nearby aircraft [6].

The pilot's message was blunt: "Please do something" [6].

"The pace of operations is building in LGA," the pilot wrote. "The controllers are pushing the line" [6]. The report drew an explicit comparison to conditions at Washington's Reagan National Airport before the January 2025 mid-air collision over the Potomac River that killed more than 60 people [6].

That filing was one of at least a dozen reports about LaGuardia submitted to ASRS over the two years preceding the March 2026 crash [6]. The reports described a pattern of air traffic control errors that repeatedly brought aircraft into proximity with each other or with ground vehicles:

• December 2024: A pilot reported that a plane came dangerously close to another aircraft on the ground after air traffic controllers issued inaccurate instructions [6].
• July 2024: A copilot reported a near-collision after controllers cleared the plane to cross a runway while another aircraft was landing on the same runway at the same time [6].
• October 2025: Two Delta Air Lines regional jets — both CRJ-900 aircraft operated by Endeavor Air — collided on a LaGuardia taxiway at low speed. Air traffic control had instructed one flight to wait and yield, but the wing of one jet struck the fuselage of the other, injuring a flight attendant and damaging both aircraft [7][8].

The ASRS is administered by NASA, not the FAA, and its reports are de-identified to protect the reporters. While the system is designed to identify safety trends, it does not have enforcement authority. The FAA can access aggregate data from the system but does not investigate individual reports [9].

52 Seconds of Chaos

The sequence of events on the night of the crash unfolded in under a minute. Air traffic controllers were already managing a separate emergency: a United Airlines aircraft on Runway 13 had aborted its takeoff because of an odor in the cabin, and the pilot had requested emergency assistance [10][11].

To reach the United plane, a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) vehicle — designated Truck 1 — requested and received clearance from the air traffic controller to cross Runway 4 at taxiway Delta [10]. The same controller had, moments earlier, cleared Air Canada Express Flight 8646 to land on that runway [11].

Audio recordings from the control tower captured the controller urgently attempting to halt the truck as the Air Canada jet bore down: "Stop, Truck 1. Stop, stop, stop!" [12][13]. The warning came too late.

After the collision, the controller was recorded saying, "I messed up" [14].

A detail that has drawn scrutiny from investigators: audio analysis suggests the same controller who cleared the aircraft to land also cleared the truck to cross the runway [11]. Normally, ground and tower controllers — who manage vehicles and aircraft respectively — operate as separate positions to prevent exactly this kind of conflict.

A Strained System

The crash has intensified a long-running debate about air traffic controller staffing in the United States. The FAA employs approximately 13,164 controllers as of the end of fiscal year 2025 — about 6 percent fewer than in 2015, even as total flights using the air traffic control system increased roughly 10 percent over the same period to 30.8 million annually [15][16].

Source: FAA Controller Workforce Plan / USAFacts

Data as of Mar 24, 2026CSV

The staffing gap is widespread. As of early 2026, approximately 285 of 313 U.S. air traffic control facilities — about 91 percent — operated below the FAA's recommended staffing levels [16]. The FAA's own workforce plan calls for hiring at least 8,900 new controllers through 2028, including 2,200 in fiscal year 2026, but the training pipeline is lengthy: new controllers require two to four years of on-the-job training before they are fully certified [15][16].

At LaGuardia specifically, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the facility has a staffing target of 37 controllers, with 33 currently employed and seven in training [17]. Former FAA air traffic control chief Mike McCormick said LaGuardia is "not a control tower that has perennial staffing problems," distinguishing it from chronically understaffed facilities elsewhere in the system [17].

The crash occurred during an overnight shift, when towers typically operate with fewer controllers. Duffy confirmed that multiple controllers were present in the tower but declined to provide specifics, citing the NTSB investigation [11].

Runway Incursions: A National Problem

The LaGuardia collision fits a broader pattern. Runway incursions — any unauthorized presence of an aircraft, vehicle, or person on a runway — have been a persistent safety concern at U.S. airports. In fiscal year 2023, the FAA recorded 22 serious (Category A and B) runway incursions, the highest annual total in over a decade [18].

The numbers improved in 2024. The FAA reported nine serious incursions that year — a 59 percent reduction — and the overall total of 1,115 runway incursions was the lowest since 2011 [18]. The rate of serious incursions in the first ten months of 2024 fell 73 percent compared to the same period in 2023 [18].

Source: FAA Runway Safety Statistics

Data as of Mar 24, 2026CSV

But the downward trend in statistics did not prevent the LaGuardia crash. Of the 1,115 runway incursions in 2024, 199 involved pedestrians or vehicles on runways without proper authorization — the precise category that describes the fire truck's presence on Runway 4 [18]. Another 183 were classified as "operational incidents" resulting from air traffic controller actions [18].

The Victims

Antoine Forest grew up in Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec, and developed his passion for aviation as a teenager, learning to fly bush planes at age 16 [3]. He flew for Air Saguenay and ExactAir before joining Jazz Aviation in late 2022 as a first officer on Air Canada Express flights based in Montreal [3]. His great-aunt, Jeannette Gagnier, told the Toronto Star: "He was always taking courses and flying. He never stopped" [3].

MacKenzie Gunther, also a first officer, had built a career flying regional aircraft in Canada. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford described both men as "two young men at the start of their careers," calling the incident "an absolute tragedy" [3].

The Investigation

The NTSB dispatched a team to LaGuardia within hours of the crash. Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered from the wreckage intact, and the CVR was transported to NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C., for analysis [19]. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that the cockpit voice recorder "was not damaged" [19].

The investigation is expected to examine:

• The sequence of air traffic control communications and whether proper coordination occurred between ground and tower positions [11]
• Staffing levels and shift patterns in the tower at the time of the collision [17]
• Whether controller fatigue or workload contributed to the error [17]
• The fire truck crew's actions and response time after receiving the stop command [12]
• The adequacy of runway safety technology, including surface detection equipment and runway status lights [18]

LaGuardia Airport reopened at 2 p.m. on March 23, roughly 14 hours after the crash. Runway 4 remained closed until March 28 under an FAA notice [20].

Systemic Fixes, Delayed

The FAA has been working to strengthen runway safety since a series of alarming close calls in 2023 drew national attention and prompted a safety summit [18][21]. Measures have included transitioning from paper flight-progress strips to digital tools at many facilities, purchasing hundreds of new radar systems, and developing a new traffic flow management system with upgraded technology expected to deploy later in 2026 [21].

Congress has invested billions in modernizing air traffic control infrastructure [21]. But implementation has been slow, and some recommendations from the FAA's own runway safety review team remain unfinished [21].

At LaGuardia, the airport's physical constraints compound the challenge. Its runways are among the shortest at any major U.S. airport, surrounded by water on three sides, with complex taxiway intersections that require frequent runway crossings by ground vehicles [5]. These crossings demand precise coordination between controllers — coordination that failed on the night of March 22.

What Comes Next

Transportation Secretary Duffy has pledged to improve controller staffing and upgrade traffic control equipment [21]. The NTSB investigation is expected to produce a preliminary report within weeks, though a final determination of probable cause typically takes 12 to 18 months [19].

The broader question — whether the pilot warnings filed through ASRS and other channels were specific and actionable enough to trigger intervention — remains unanswered. The ASRS system is designed to identify trends, not to mandate fixes. Reports are anonymous and de-identified, which encourages candid reporting but also means they do not carry the force of a formal safety complaint filed directly with the FAA [9].

Whether the pattern documented in those reports — controllers "pushing the line," near-misses on runways, and an operational tempo that at least one pilot compared to conditions before the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in decades — constituted a foreseeable risk that should have prompted immediate action is a question the investigation will need to answer.

For Antoine Forest and MacKenzie Gunther, that answer comes too late.