On the night two pilots died at LaGuardia Airport, the control tower may have been running with fewer hands than its own rulebook required. A document reviewed by Reuters shows that LaGuardia's standard operating procedures barred controllers from consolidating the local and ground positions before midnight, yet the collision between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck happened at roughly 11:37 p.m. ET on March 22, with evidence suggesting those roles had already been merged.
The crash killed both pilots aboard Air Canada Express Flight 8646, a CRJ900 operated by Jazz Aviation arriving from Montreal. Dozens of passengers and crew were injured. And now, barely a week later, the staffing question threatens to overshadow every other line of inquiry.
If the tower's own procedures were violated, and if that violation contributed to the deadliest incident at a New York-area airport in years, then the Federal Aviation Administration has a problem that no press release can fix.
The LaGuardia Tower Standard Operating Procedures document, dated 2023 and still current in 2026, is blunt. Reuters reported that it states: "Positions at LaGuardia Tower are not to be consolidated to one position prior to midnight local time or 90 minutes after the start of the shift, whichever is later." The document also specifies that positions should only be consolidated as traffic warrants, and that if they are consolidated, they must be split back apart when traffic volume increases.
That rule exists for a reason. It traces back to a 1997 collision at the same airport between a private jet and a vehicle on the ground. The NTSB's final report on that earlier incident led to new procedures requiring that "local and ground positions shall not be combined prior to" midnight. Nearly three decades later, the same airport may have repeated the same mistake.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters last week that only two controllers were working in a glass-enclosed section of the tower at the time of the accident. One was a local controller managing active runways and the immediate airspace. The other was a controller-in-charge who was also providing pilots with departure clearance. The controller-in-charge signed in at 10:30 p.m. The local controller signed on at 10:45 p.m.
What Homendy did not clarify, and what remains the central open question, is who was handling ground control duties. As she put it:
"It is not clear who was conducting the duties of the ground controller. We have conflicting information."
That admission alone should concern anyone who boards a commercial flight at a major American airport.
The night of March 22 was not quiet. Weather-related delays had pushed traffic into late hours. Cirium data cited by Reuters showed that 70 commercial flights took off or landed at LaGuardia between 10 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., the window leading up to the crash. The average for that same time period since 2022 was 53 flights.
That is a 32 percent jump above normal volume. And it came on a night when, by all available evidence, the tower had consolidated positions that its own procedures said should have remained separate until midnight at the earliest.
Multiple current and retired controllers reviewed audio posted by LiveATC.net and told Reuters they believed the local controller was also handling traffic on the ground. One current New York-area controller was direct about the implications:
"And that is not even talking about the traffic, volume and complexity that night."
The air traffic control error behind the collision, clearing both the aircraft and the fire truck onto the same runway, is already under NTSB investigation. The staffing question adds a layer: was the controller juggling duties that should have belonged to two separate people?
The collision itself was catastrophic. The Jazz Aviation CRJ900, operating as Air Canada Express Flight 8646, struck a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle that was responding to a separate incident on Runway 4. LaGuardia Airport confirmed that emergency response protocols were immediately activated.
The pilot and co-pilot were killed. Two people in the emergency vehicle were injured. The aircraft had been carrying 72 passengers and four crew members from Montreal, and 71 people were reportedly taken to hospitals with what were described as minor injuries. LaGuardia was shut down under a ground stop as federal investigators from the NTSB and FAA responded.
But "minor injuries" does not capture the full picture. Veteran flight attendant Solange Tremblay, who had spent 26 years on the job, was ejected more than 320 feet from the aircraft, still strapped into her jump seat, and was found lying on the tarmac. Her daughter, Sarah Lepine, described the injuries: two shattered legs with open fractures, a fractured spine, major skin loss requiring grafts, and a blood transfusion after surgery.
Lepine's words were stark: "My mom has suffered so much from this event and regrettably her struggles are far from over."
Passengers aboard the flight recounted the terror of the collision and credited the pilots with saving lives in the moments before impact.
The FAA runs America's air traffic control system. It did not respond to Reuters' request for comment. Neither did the NTSB, beyond confirming that it was seeking information on the duties each controller performed that night.
That silence is a choice. The agency responsible for the safety of every commercial flight in the country has, at minimum, a document problem: its own facility's written procedures appear to have been violated on a night when two people died and dozens were hurt. Whether that violation contributed to the crash is the NTSB's job to determine. But the FAA's job is to ensure the rules are followed in the first place.
Controller staffing shortages are not new. They have been a known concern across the national airspace system for years. The deadly LaGuardia collision has revived those concerns with force, and rightly so. When a facility's own procedures exist because of a prior crash at the same airport, and those procedures appear to have been disregarded on the night of a fatal accident, the word for that is institutional failure.
The 1997 collision at LaGuardia produced a clear lesson. The NTSB wrote new rules. The tower codified them. And 29 years later, on a night with 32 percent more traffic than average, the evidence suggests those rules were not followed.
This is not a story about one bad night. It is a story about whether the people and agencies charged with keeping passengers safe are doing the basic work of following their own procedures. The families of those two pilots deserve an answer. So does every traveler who lands at LaGuardia and trusts that someone in the tower is watching, and that there are enough people up there to do the job right.
Recent weeks have seen a string of alarming aviation incidents, from a Delta engine fire in Sao Paulo to other crashes that have shaken public confidence. The LaGuardia staffing question hits differently because it points not to mechanical failure or bad weather, but to a bureaucratic lapse, the kind that is entirely preventable if the people in charge bother to enforce their own rules.
The NTSB investigation will take months. The open questions are serious: Who was performing ground control duties? Was the consolidation of positions authorized, and by whom? Did the higher-than-normal traffic volume factor into the decision? And why, after a nearly identical lesson in 1997, did the system fail again?
The FAA owes the public more than silence. If the agency cannot explain how its own facility's procedures were apparently breached on the night of a fatal crash, then the problem runs deeper than one tower on one evening. It runs to the heart of whether anyone at the top is minding the system at all.
Rules written in the wake of tragedy mean nothing if they sit in a binder while controllers work short-staffed through the busiest hours of the night. The two pilots who died at LaGuardia deserved better. So does every passenger who boards the next flight.
