Antoine Forrest has been identified by his family as one of the two pilots killed when an Air Canada regional jet collided with a Port Authority terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
The accident on the ground Sunday night killed the two pilots, injured dozens and prompted LaGuardia to shut down for more than 12 hours.
Officials are investigating the site, on March 23, 2026, where an Air Canada plane grounded after colliding with a Port Authority fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
Seth Wing/AP
The collision occurred shortly after Air Canada Flight 8646, carrying four crew members and 72 passengers, landed from Montreal at about 11:45 p.m., according to Port Authority Executive Director Catherine Garcia. Officials said the plane, which was operated by Jaz Airlines, collided with a rescue and firefighting vehicle that was responding to another plane.
FlightRadar24 told ABC News that preliminary data shows the plane was traveling at speeds between 93 and 105 mph when it collided with the fire truck.
At least 43 people, from the plane and the fire engine, were taken to hospitals, officials said.
National Transportation Safety Board employees inspect the wreckage of an Air Canada Express plane that collided with a ground vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, March 23, 2026.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
While the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the crash, NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy He said there were two people in the air traffic control tower cabin at the time of the collision: the local controller and the controller in charge.
The two controllers are “standard operating procedure for LaGuardia on the midnight shift,” Homendy said at a news conference Tuesday.
She said the NTSB was concerned about fatigue resulting from the midnight shift in previous investigations, but stressed there was no evidence of fatigue so far in this case.
LaGuardia has a runway safety system that allows air traffic controllers to track surface movement of planes and vehicles, but that system “did not alert,” Homendy said.
The analysis found that the system “did not issue an alert due to the proximity of merging and non-merging vehicles near the runway, resulting in an inability to establish a high-confidence path,” Homendy said.
NTSB investigators walk the scene of a March 22 collision between an Air Canada Express plane and a fire engine on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, March 23, 2026.
NTSB
Joe, one of the plane’s passengers, said that while the plane was landing, he noticed some emergency vehicles on the runway.
“Right before the collision, we felt something, maybe like the emergency brake pulling, or some kind of hard stop, before we hit the truck,” Joe, who did not want his last name used, told ABC News Live. “But before that, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that I noticed.”
“Because I was sitting in the emergency aisle, someone on the plane shouted, ‘The emergency exits are open,'” Joe said. “So at that time, I pulled the lever down, hooked the door, put it on the side of the plane, and a few of us got out through the emergency exit and onto the wing of the plane. The New York Defense Forces and the Port Authority Police ordered us to slide down the wing. … It was so low to the ground it was easy to get off.”
Wreckage of an Air Canada Express plane that collided with a ground vehicle at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in New York City, March 24, 2026.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Joe, who was on the plane with his fiancée, said Monday evening that they were “very shocked, and they are still in shock.”
“And obviously my heart is sad for the pilots and all those injured,” Joe said.
He said he believes the pilots “saved many lives on that flight, and my heart is broken for them.”
LaGuardia closed its doors after the incident and slowly resumed flights at 2pm on Monday. The runway where the collision occurred will remain closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
