[ryandrake]

As an informed person (PPL flying single engine into smallish towered airports all the time), it is absolutely insane for an airport the size of LGA. Occasionally, you will encounter one guy doing tower and ground at very small class D airports or during not-so-busy shifts.

[ultrarunner]

To play devil's advocate, ASEL into small deltas is significantly different than receiving full-stop IFRs late at night.

This small mistake (and it is initially small, just catastrophic) is a system breakdown, not necessarily a staffing breakdown. Though staffing is definitely a wider issue in the NAS.

Edit to add: looking at this incident closer it appears LGA was busy enough to make a single tower/ground controller an obviously bad plan. Still, systemically, there's enough low hanging fruit here, like ADSb in for the airport trucks or hold short line guard lights. I hope the takeaway isn't just "don't have controllers make mistakes".

[ryandrake]

Yea, if you listen to the ATC audio, you can hear that in addition to the normal high workload of handling both ground and tower, this guy had an emergency aircraft on a taxiway to deal with, too. A lot of holes in the swiss cheese lined up, but one of them clearly is ATC workload.

[bombcar]

Perhaps in a scenario where there is an active emergency and one controller, protocol should be that ground and air frequencies are combined.

That would have given the jet a chance to hear the truck cleared to cross the runway they were landing on.

[blitzar]

Even with multiple staff - the ATC person clearing you to drive across the runway should be the same ATC person doing takeoff / landings on that runway.

The audio sounds unsure when giving the clearance - but possibly hindsight ears at work.