A runway warning system failed to sound an alarm moments before an Air Canada jet and a fire truck collided while the plane was landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, federal investigators said Tuesday. National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said during a news conference that the system didn’t work as intended because the fire truck did not have a transponder. While the NTSB hasn’t recommended that vehicles on airport grounds have transponders, they should, Homendy said. “Air traffic controllers should know what’s before them, whether it’s on airport surface or in the airspace. They should have that information to ensure safety,” she said.
From various seat-map diagrams, she would have been in the aft-facing jumpseat in front of the cabin. With the seat deployed she would have occupied space in the fuselage path between the front exit doors, in the galley area.
I saw a timeline earlier today and now can’t find it. It was pretty precise. According to it, almost a minute passed between the time the fire truck was given clearance to cross runway 4 and the impact. What was the truck doing during that time? I assumed that a truck or plane would get right up to the stop line, request clearance and, once received, cross expeditiously. And in a truck’s (not having a transponder) case, announce that they are crossing now and then again, when clear of the runway? Do landing flights get a warning that emergency vehicles are moving around as a heads up or is vehicular activity near runways so common that it doesn’t warrant a warning?
A passenger said the pilot immediately hit the brakes on touchdown. the next question is could the plane clear the truck on a go around. 15 feet would probably have done it.
At LGA, every pilot does that on every landing. We may never know exactly when the pilots recognized the impending collision. But IMO the fact they stomped on the brakes promptly after landing in LGA is not evidence of that.
Only 17 seconds between readback & impact & the apparatus was already moving so well under a minute.
There was a caravan of emergency vehicles, both my what was visible in the small, grainy video & by the request (Truck 1 & company). I know nothing about their procedures or standards but I have traveled in caravans many times. It us not uncommon for the lead driver to verbalize over the radio a ‘go’ command to the group; IF Truck 1 did that (on fire radio) that’s a couple more of those less than 17 seconds.
I’ve had a whole row to myself before, now I didn’t have the special pad they’re going to put down to make it a bench seat but it was a poor man’s upgrade & not nearly as nice as business class. To stretch your legs out, you need to sit sideways, which isn’t so comfortable because it’s not designed for that & if I lay down to sleep, I could see my feet extending into the aisle when I’m not consciously monitoring their position, which would probably result in them being jolted every time someone walks past.
A slight digression from the main topic, but I thought it noteworthy. Many condolences have been pouring in for the deceased Air Canada pilots, who, as I mentioned, flying for Air Canada’s regional spinoff, were young and just at the start of their careers and undoubtedly destined for the main airline in the future. The condolences included a video from the president of Air Canada.
But other than “hello/bonjour” the entire speech was in English! The horror! Quebecois everywhere were clutching their pearls and heading to the fainting couch! Now Quebec politicians are demanding that the president of Air Canada resign!
Yes, folks, the USA may be a nut-house, but in some ways Quebec ain’t much better. Certainly not when it comes to language issues.
I think this was a load of merde du chavall on the part of the politicians. Rousseau said that he recorded a quick message before rushing from Montreal to New York. Let’s keep an eye on the big picture of what AC is dealing with here.
That’s most likely correct. I don’t know the CRJ very well, but it shares a cockpit structural design with the Challenger business jets. To my knowledge the CRJ has always installed the cockpit door at the “FS 280” bulkhead, which is the “wall” directly behind the pilot seats. The size of the center pedestal means there’s no place for a jump seat forward of that bulkhead, so any flight attendant seat would be in the cabin side. Challenger has them right in the aisle, they can stick their feet into the cockpit because they don’t have a door.
In one photo I could see what looked like a toilet bowl, which would be in the right hand side aft of a galley and service door. I could see the LHS Pax door in the same photo. So there’s kind of a diagonal slice that happened.
That whole area of the aircraft is pretty structurally chonky given the cockpit to fuselage join, the door surround structure, and the nose gear structure.
A 2.5 percentile female is 57.2 inches tall, according to Dreyfuss “The Measure of Man”. It’s a fantastic reference and easy to find online.
Aircraft certification tests often involve 5% stature female and 95% male participants. We do have a list of employees who are those heights that we can call for reach or operational tests.
Pretty good WAG on my part. My ex-wife was an aero engineer who was very proud of being right at the bottom 5% cutoff. As small as could still be labeled “Normal.”
My son kept asking to be allowed to participate in a test as a 5% female representative (since it’s just a height criterion, something like a reach test for an oxygen mask could be argued as being valid). Such a person is 60" tall.
Unfortunately no opportunity to try to justify using a child rather than an employee has come up, and now the poor kid is already 62" and is too tall.
So now he strives to be 72" for all the 95% male testing opportunities.
