Late on Sunday, March 22, an Air Canada flight from Montreal collided with a firefighting truck in the LaGuardia Airport. Pilot Antoine Forest and Co-pilot Mackenzie Gunther were both killed as a result of the collision. The two officials within the fire truck are expected to recover from their injuries and only 6 of the 39 passengers and crew that were taken to the hospital remain.

Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) outlined the events that occurred in the final seconds before the crash. Around 25 seconds before the Air Canda plane landed, the involved fire truck had asked to cross the runway in order to respond to a foul odor reported by another plane. The Air Canda plane, however, was cleared to land approximately two minutes before this. Air traffic controllers also cleared the truck at which point the plane was nearly 100 feet from the ground. The NTSB stated that just nine seconds before the collision, controllers urged twice for the truck to stop. However, at that point there was likely no time to prevent the collision.

There were two air traffic controllers on shift at the time-which is standard for the midnight shift- however the NTSB has had concerns over whether this is enough. LaGuardia is the twentieth busiest airport in the nation and flight delays on Sunday night that led to dozens of planes landing every minute only added to the “heavy workload”, as stated by NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy, that the air traffic controllers faced.

Homendy also highlighted how at the time, the runway safety system implemented “did not generate an alert” when the truck crossed the runway. This is largely due to the fact that the truck did not have a transponder. While having these transponders isn’t mandatory, it allows the safety system to accurately track the surface movements of vehicles on the runway. The runway status light, however, were working, which turn red when a runway is occupied. This could have signaled to the fire truck to not cross the runway despite the approval of the controllers.

Since the investigation is ongoing, it is still unclear whether the fire truck saw the plane and attempted to avoid it or what actions the pilots took. Though for passengers aboard the plane, they expressed gratitude at the pilots’ actions.  One passenger, Joe, who spoke to CNN, stated, ” Those two pilots, I truly believe that whatever they did at the end, whether it was pulling a break or trying to stop or divert at the last moment, they saved everybody on board…I will be forever grateful to them”