Passengers spoke about the catastrophic landing of an Air Canada flight in New York on Sunday night.
The Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft had slammed into a ground vehicle while landing at LaGuardia Airport, claiming the lives of the pilot and copilot.
Everybody was “screaming,” and the pilot’s cabin was almost entirely “destroyed,” a passenger said.
The landing of an Air Canada flight in New York turned catastrophic on Sunday night
The Air Canada Express flight had taken off from Montreal Trudeau International Airport and crashed into a fire truck while landing at LaGuardia just before midnight.
Around 72 passengers and 4 crew members were aboard Flight 8646 when it rammed into the fire truck, which was responding to a separate incident just before 11:40 p.m. local time.
The pilot and copilot lost their lives, while dozens were injured.
Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said during a Monday morning news conference that around 41 passengers and crew, in addition to two people from the fire truck, were transported to the hospital.
32 of them have since been released.
Photos and videos revealed that the nose of the aircraft suffered the most damage.
Passengers aboard Flight 8646 recalled hearing screams and seeing the pilot’s cabin almost entirely “destroyed”
Jack Cabot, a passenger on the doomed flight, recalled the harrowing events and said they were going down for a “regular landing.”
But “we came in pretty hard. We immediately hit something and it was just chaos in there,” Cabot said.
He claimed the aircraft came to a standstill within a short period, possibly about five seconds.
“Everybody was hunkered down, and everybody was screaming pretty quickly,” Cabot continued.
He said his co-passengers suggested jumping out of the exit door.
“We didn’t have any directions because the pilot’s cabin had been kind of destroyed, so somebody said, ‘Let’s get the emergency exit and get the door and let’s all jump out,’ and that’s exactly what we did,” he said.
The pilot and copilot lost their lives, and dozens of others were left injured
HORRIBLE FOOTAGE of the CRASH between an Air Canada plane and firetruck at LaGuardia airport.
pic.twitter.com/R3HImyaArW— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) March 23, 2026
Authorities revealed that the fire truck was on the runway responding to an issue related to another flight.
Air traffic control audio captured the other aircraft, United flight 2384, reporting an odor in the cabin that had sickened the flight attendants. In response, the fire truck was given permission to cross Runway 4 at Taxiway D and steer towards the United Airlines flight.
But at the same time, the Air Canada flight was making its way to the same runway.
An air traffic controller was heard saying “stop, stop, stop” to the truck in the moments before the collision. The controller then addressed the plane and said, “I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now.”
Signs of distress were heard in the controller’s voice, but he continued doing his job and asked an approaching Delta airline plane to “go around” the wreckage.
“I messed up,” the controller was later heard saying, prompting another pilot to try to console him.
“I messed up,” the air traffic controller was heard saying after the devastating collision
Timothy Henriksen spoke to KHOU 11 and said he was supposed to fly from LaGuardia to Miami on Sunday night. He boarded his Frontier Airlines aircraft, which even began taxiing in preparation for takeoff.
But the plane abruptly stopped on the runway, and they heard the pilot’s voice filling the cabin. They were informed that an Air Canada flight had collided with a vehicle on the runway.
“I looked to my right, out my window. I saw some emergency vehicles approaching… Then I looked to my north a little further, and then I could see a plane propped up,” he said.
“It looked like it was almost lifting off, but it was stationary,” he continued.
Henriksen and his fellow flyers eventually deboarded their Frontier Airlines aircraft and got a better view of the wreckage from inside the airport.
“The plane [was] missing the whole front nose,” a witness said
“We got a view of the plane missing the whole front nose,” he added, admitting it only hit them then that “this is very serious.”
“We all thought it was like a minor bump… Once we got a good view of the actual wreckage, I knew that was pretty serious,” he added.
The closure of LaGuardia, one of the city’s busiest airports, led to at least 540 flights being canceled.
“This collision was unnecessary,” someone harshly said online, adding “someone didn’t do their ground job”
