In public records submitted months, and sometimes years, ahead of the Air Canada collision at New York City’s LaGuardia airport, pilots brought up concerns of miscommunication with air traffic control.
Nine reports involving a critical “ground conflict” at LaGuardia were submitted between January 2022 and January 2026 to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a database where pilots, air traffic controllers and others can submit reports confidentially on close call events.
“The pace of operations is building in LGA (LaGuardia). The controllers are pushing the line,” one pilot said in a report from August 2025, describing a near miss during landing where air traffic control failed to provide guidance on multiple nearby aircraft.
Two pilots have died after an Air Canada Express plane from Montreal collided with a fire truck after landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York shortly before midnight Sunday.
The pilot said the airport was “starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there,” referencing Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the January 2025 mid-air collision over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C, that killed 67 people.
The pilot also noted a section of runway status lights that appeared to be disabled, closing the submission with a plea to “please do something.”
■ Past reports of miscommunication with air control
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In the Sunday crash between a landing Air Canada Express Jet and a fire truck on the runway of LaGuardia airport, two pilots were killed and more than 40 passengers were sent to the hospital.
In control tower audio, an air traffic controller is heard giving clearance for a fire truck to cross the runway, then seconds later saying “Stop, stop, stop, stop. Truck 1, stop, stop, stop.”
The man is later heard saying “I messed up” speaking to a pilot of a Frontier plane on the runway, who replied “No man, you did the best you could.”
A few months earlier, two Delta planes had a ‘low-speed collision’ on a LaGuardia taxiway in October that injured one person.
Reports submitted to the voluntary reporting system are analyzed by staff, before information is provided to aviation authorities “for further evaluation and potential corrective actions.”
In a report from December 2024, a pilot outlined how planes on the ground almost came in contact while the control tower “was unaware of what was happening.”
A few months earlier in July, a co-pilot reported an “extremely close” miss between a landing plane and a second aircraft cleared to cross on the same runway.
“Ground Control issued a stop command just in time.”
An incident in May 2023 detailed a near collision on the runway between two taxiing planes, where the pilot said air traffic control didn’t notify their crew of having to wait for another aircraft.
The investigation into the Sunday collision is ongoing, led by the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board. The airplane’s data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder have been recovered.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters Monday night the agency still had a lot of data to verify in their open investigation into the Sunday collision — including how air traffic control was staffed and the backgrounds of the pilots as well as the status of the plane’s system at the time of landing.
■ With files from Mark Colley and The Associated Press
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