Air traffic controller ‘I messed up’ highlights human limitations – but experts urge caution
20 seconds and an entire world passed between the time a fire truck was launched to cross Runway 4 at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night and the moment an Air Canada plane was cleared to land, killing the two pilots.
What happened in that third of a minute is now in the public eye, especially with the loud noise of an air traffic controller trying to correct the mistake of allowing a truck and a plane to enter the same train line.
Whether the same person made those two decisions and communicated with them remains unclear.
The recording reveals the pain of the crisis that the administrator tried to fix during that short period of time. What it does not reveal is everything that led to the time and pressures and constraints of completing the task within the allotted time including another flight emergency.
“I tried to contact my staff. And we were dealing with an emergency earlier. I’m in a fight,” he is heard telling another administrator afterwards.
One sentence weight
Those last three words quickly became one of the most shocking aspects of the crash that killed two Canadian pilots and injured scores of others. Aviation experts warn that they risk oversimplifying what could be a complex failure.
“There was a lot of bitterness and concern, and concern in his voice,” said John Gradek, an aviation management expert and faculty member at McGill University in Montreal.
Former FAA air traffic control expert Mike McCormick called it “probably the most important and worst thing that could happen to an administrator.”
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators have already signaled that the accident cannot be pinned down to a single fault and that early findings point to the breakdown of multiple safety systems.
Thunderstorms earlier in the day caused congestion around midnight and air control changes with light crews. But zoom back and concerns about air traffic control workers go back decades, as do concerns about ground intrusion at airports, as air traffic continues to grow.
“It’s easy to blame someone, but we know that after studying many incidents and accidents … the origin can go back sometimes months and years earlier,” said Marc-Antoine Plourde, a Montreal-based pilot who has for decades held conferences aimed at helping people overcome their fear of flying.
‘I can see myself doing that’
At the time of the collision, two controllers were working in the tower cab, which is typical for the night shift, but one that requires them to juggle multiple roles at once.
Homendy acknowledged that those conditions have been a concern for the program for years.
“This is a tough place to work hard,” said Homendy. “I would caution against pointing fingers.”
For some in the industry, the regulator’s statement was alarming and concerning.
“I can see myself doing that,” said Jeff Nielsen, who hosts a podcast called Airline Pilot Guy and was a pilot for Delta Airlines for 35 years. “I feel responsible for what happened and I just need to express it.”
Air Canada Flight 8646 collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport, New York, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of others. Andrew Chang reveals what we know about the crash from air traffic control audio and insights from aviation experts. Photos provided by The Canadian Press, Reuters and Getty Images
Nielsen added that most experts would automatically avoid making such a statement because of how the public airwaves have become.
“Most people would never even think of saying anything that would sound like accepting responsibility or accepting blame,” he said.
Echoes of the 1968 Asoh defense
In 2021, Nielsen dedicated an episode of his podcast to the 1968 aviation incident in which a Japan Airlines pilot, Captain Kohei Asoh, landed a DC-8 in San Francisco Bay (instead of an airstrip) and reportedly told his partner, “As you Americans say, I’m dead.”
Despite the blunt admission, Asoh was found not guilty of the crime. Investigators eventually agreed that a combination of factors — including confusion, poor judgment and systemic problems — contributed to the incident.
The case has become a landmark in aviation law for the idea that an admission of error, in and of itself, does not establish guilt.
But several experts say there is a stark difference between the circumstances that led to Asoh’s three words in 1968 and those heard in air traffic control on Sunday.
“In the Japan Airlines incident, you have a pilot who made a mistake. He wasn’t ordered by anybody else to do something,” Hayden Hamilton, a pilot and managing editor of the American Aviation Historical Society, told CBC News in an email.
“In the LaGuardia crash, I believe you will find many factors and failures that led to this crash, as tragic as it is for the poor pilots.”
Antoine Forest, a 30-year-old man from Coteau-du-Lac, Que., was one of two pilots killed in a crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night.
‘It’s just human nature’
John Cox, former NTSB investigator and aviation safety coordinator, agrees.
“It’s just human nature,” Cox said. “In some situations of stress, people say things and sometimes they may not be true.”
Investigators are examining certain technical and procedural aspects, including reports that the underground vehicles involved may not have been equipped with transponders, and the complexities of radio communication during high-pressure situations.
Hamilton wonders why the fire truck pulled onto the runway without realizing the plane was about to arrive and why the ground collision warning systems failed.
For Gradek, this incident represents a worst-case scenario and will no doubt be taught as a lesson in how high the risks are.
