The second pilot who was killed when an Air Canada plane crashed into a firetruck at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport has been identified.
MacKenzie Gunther served as the first officer on Air Canada Express’ Flight 646 from Montreal on Sunday night, working alongside pilot Antoine Forest, 30, of Coteau-du-Lac in Quebec, Radio-Canada reports.
Both Gunther and Forest were killed upon impact when their Bombardier CRJ-900 landed on the runway at the same moment a fire truck crossed its path on the tarmac at around 11.47pm.
The plane was traveling at approximately 150mph when it struck the fire truck during heavy rainfall, and shocking surveillance footage showed a huge splash of water as the collision sent the truck careening across the runway.
Forty-one people were rushed to the hospital following the collision, including two firefighters who were inside the firetruck at the time of the crash and a flight attendant who was thrown 330 feet from the plane.
There had been 72 passengers and four crew members aboard the aircraft, and experts said the death toll could have been far higher if the truck had collided with the fuel stored on the plane.
Federal authorities are now investigating what may have caused the fatal collision, as audio from air traffic control revealed workers pleaded for the fire truck to stop seconds before it crashed into the landing jet.
The fire truck had been given permission to cross the runway to deal with an unrelated issue on a separate plane, where a pilot reported that an ‘odor’ was filling the aircraft that left ‘flight attendants feeling ill’, officials said.
Surveillance footage of the runway showed the Air Canada Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft landing at the same moment the fire truck crossed its path on the tarmac
National Transportation Safety Board investigators were seen surveying the wreckage on Monday
As the fire truck raced to the other aircraft, air traffic controllers appeared to realize it was on a collision course with the Air Canada jet just seconds before impact at around 11.30pm, as one said in the audio: ‘Truck One, stop, stop, stop!’
Addressing the plane seconds later, the air traffic controller said: ‘JAZZ 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now.’
Images from the tarmac after the incident showed the truck was destroyed in the collision. The nose of the Air Canada plane had also been torn off by the impact.
The deadly crash left LaGuardia Airport closed for several hours, before it reopened Monday afternoon at a reduced capacity while the wrecked plane and firetruck remain on the tarmac.
National Transportation Safety Board members will now comb through the wreckage to figure out what to collect and take back to a lab in Washington DC, Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.
But authorities have already been able to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, Homendy told reporters.
She said the NTSB, Port Authority and emergency responders had to cut a hole in the roof of the aircraft and drop down into the wreckage to secure the devices.
They were then taken back to labs in Washington DC, and investigators have ‘been able to at least verify that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged,’ Homendy said.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
