How the deadly collision at LaGuardia unfolded

(CNN) — The Air Canada regional jet was scheduled to take off Sunday from Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport around 8 p.m.

Steering the one-hour flight were pilot Antoine Forest and first officer Mackenzie Gunther, both “young men,” the top Federal Aviation Administration official would say, “at the start of their careers.”

They were bound for the third-busiest airport in the New York region, LaGuardia, where the crew of air traffic controllers was slightly smaller than its target of 37, with 33 employed and seven in training, the Transportation Secretary later would explain.

There were only two controllers working in LaGuardia’s control tower that night: The local controller, tasked with managing active runways and the airspace surrounding the airport, and the controller-in-charge – who, in addition to overseeing the safety of all air traffic operations, was also responsible for giving pilots departure clearance, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

That staffing was standard operating procedure overnight, the NTSB said Tuesday, at LaGuardia and airports nationwide.

Sunday’s collision has become the latest in a series of high-profile, fatal accidents renewing scrutiny of the airline industry.

US air travel has also faced another significant strain for weeks: diminished Transportation Security Administration staffing owing to a lapse in funding for the Department of Homeland Security as federal leaders fight over immigration enforcement tactics.

As Air Canada flight 8646’s departure time approached, passenger Jack Cabot made his way to the gate. So did Rebecca Liquori, a mom heading back to her sons, 2 and 4, whose giggles she cherished.

But the flight was running late.

More than two hours late.

‘Truck One, stop, stop, stop!’

It was after 10 p.m. when the CRJ-900 took off, en route to an arrival gate in East Elmhurst, Queens.

About an hour later – shortly after 11 p.m. – LaGuardia’s Air Traffic Control Tower got a radio message from the pilot of another flight, this one run by United Airlines.

His plane had pushed away from the terminal but would head back to it, he said, because of a problem with its de-icing system and a “weird” odor onboard the aircraft, an audio recording indicates.

“We’re going to be going back to the gate,” the United flight 2384 pilot said. “Request fire, as well.”

As the controllers scrambled to find a gate for the United flight, its pilot declared an emergency, noting his flight attendants felt ill because of the odor.

“We will need to go into any available gate at this time,” the pilot said.

The tower confirmed the request and said the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates LaGuardia, would send a fire truck, in case the flight needed to evacuate.

Then, several events happened in quick succession, leading directly to the sort of tragedy not seen on this airfield in decades.

At about 11:35 p.m., Air Canada flight 8646 was cleared to land on LaGuardia’s Runway 4.

Minutes later, controllers cleared the firefighting vehicle responding to the United plane emergency to cross the same path:

Runway 4.

Mere seconds after giving that permission, a controller seemed to reverse course, emphatically telling the rescue truck to stop, audio reveals.

But Air Canada flight 8646 had already landed on that runway.

It was hurtling at more than 100 mph toward the rescue crew.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck One, stop, stop, stop!” the controller instructed.

It’s not clear if the fire crew heard the command – or if they misunderstood it.

But it was too late.

The NTSB would later point to problems with technology as potential factors in the accident: The fire truck had no transponder, which helps air traffic controllers identify and track vehicles on the airfield.

Passengers mount a daring escape

Liquori was sitting in an emergency row next to the exit.

“We hit a very rough landing. It almost felt like the plane jolted. And after that, you hear the pilot try to brake, and it was like a grinding noise,” she told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“After that, it was a huge, just, boom. And we all just jolted out of our seats,” she said.

The Air Canada flight slammed into the side of the rescue truck with such force the nose of the plane crumpled.

The cabin instantly descended into panic.

“It was just chaos in there,” Cabot later told CNN. “In that short period, I mean, everybody was hunkered down, and everybody was screaming.”

Liquori squeezed her eyes shut and thought of her boys.

“Oh, my God, I’m never going to see them,” she thought. “I’m never going to get to tickle them. I’m never going to hear their laughs again.

“I’m never going to hear them say, ‘I love you, Mommy.’”

Dozens of passengers were hurt. A flight attendant strapped to her jump seat was ejected onto the runway.

Still, when Liquori opened her eyes, she felt like she had “won the lotto.”

Without direction from the cockpit or crew, Cabot joined fellow passengers in coordinating their own frantic exodus.

“Let’s get the emergency exit and get the door,” somebody said, “and let’s all jump out.”

“And that’s exactly what we did,” recalled Cabot, who from the ground filmed other passengers scrambling down a wing.

By then, “about 25 to 30 feet of the front part of the airplane (was) missing,” safety analyst David Soucie later told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, adding the damage made the jet heavier toward its tail.

Within moments, the aircraft tilted, pushing the gaping space where its nose had been up toward the sky.

And, yet, it could have been worse.

‘You did the best you could’

Had the fire truck been anywhere else on the runway, the plane “would’ve struck against the wing, the fuel cells, the engines,” Soucie said.

“It would have created a huge fire and would have had many, many fatalities,” he went on. It’s “just out of pure luck, that airplane hit in the middle of that fire truck.”

Eighteen minutes after the collision, a noticeably distraught air traffic controller spoke with a Frontier Airlines pilot.

“That wasn’t good to watch,” the pilot said, per an audio recording.

“Yeah, I know,” the controller responded. “I tried to reach out to them. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”

“Nah, man,” the pilot responded. “You did the best you could.”

Because many factors play a role in aviation accidents, investigators can spend a year or more determining a root cause.

Two people in the Air Canada cockpit were dead, the airline confirmed.

They were the first fatalities at LaGuardia in more than three decades, the Port Authority’s executive director said, coming 34 years to the day after a passenger jet wrecked on takeoff.

On Sunday, it was the final actions of flight 8646’s pilots, as far as Liquori is concerned, that spared everyone else onboard.

“The pilots saved our lives,” she said. “I felt like their quick thinking and quick action, braking, slowed the impact and lessened what could have been an even bigger fatality. They’re the heroes.”

“I’m forever indebted to them,” she added. “They’re the reasons I was able to make it home safe to see my boys. And my heart goes out to their families.”

‘6-day weeks of 10-hour shifts’

The collision shuttered LaGuardia for more than 13 hours before it reopened Monday afternoon.

Both the US and Canadian transportation safety boards have launched investigations into the cause of Sunday’s collision.

Aviation experts believe the crash “is symptomatic of an aviation system that is bursting at the seams,” said CNN’s Pete Muntean, a pilot and flight instructor.

Air traffic controllers “are overworked, working mandatory six-day weeks of 10-hour shifts,” Muntean said. “Investigators will want to know if communications played a major role here.”

Controllers have faced staffing shortages for decades, retired air traffic controller Dave Riley told CNN. And their tasks can quickly pile up.

“In that audio, you hear how busy the controller was,” he said. “This speaks to how vital the job of an air traffic controller is. And when they’re overworked and distracted, these kinds of tragic events can happen.”

Even so, “as airports go, LaGuardia is a very well-staffed airport,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday as he acknowledged the facility’s air traffic control staffing had been slightly short of its target.

The NTSB has warned “for years” about combined positions in air traffic control facilities, chair Jennifer Homendy said Tuesday.

Such a setup is not unfamiliar: Among factors the NTSB found led to last year’s midair collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines regional jet that killed 67 near Washington, DC, was air traffic control’s “degraded performance,” with two positions combined in the tower.

It was the deadliest US commercial aviation accident in decades.

It remains unclear who was controlling aircraft and vehicles on the ground at LaGuardia on Sunday, Homendy said.

“It is not clear who was conducting the duties of the ground controller. We have conflicting information,” she said at a news conference, adding it may have been the local controller or the controller-in-charge. That person would be tasked with managing all aircraft and vehicle movements on taxiways but typically not active runways.

Additionally, the airport’s surface detection equipment did not generate an alert prior to the collision “due to the close proximity of vehicles merging and unmerging near the runway,” which resulted “in the inability to create a track of high confidence,” Homendy said.

LaGuardia’s Runway 4, the FAA said, is expected to stay closed until Friday.

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CNN’s Aaron Cooper, Sara Smart and Shimon Prokupecz contributed to this report.