[rglover]

> https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-fir...

Just a quick read/speculation based on the linked forum post...

Short of insane visibility conditions that prevented them from seeing the plane coming, the firetruck operator seems to be the liable party (beyond the airport for understaffing controllers—this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts but that's still no excuse for having a solo controller at that busy of an airport, especially at night).

The controller in question seems to have caught their mistake quickly and reversed the order instead asking the firetruck to stop (but for some reason, this wasn't heard).

Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?

[wk_end]

"Liability" isn't really how we try to see things in aviation. While it's true that it's ultimately considered the responsibility of the truck/plane to visually confirm that crossing the runway is safe, refuse unsafe commands from ATC, and comply to the best of their ability when ATC says "stop" at the last second, we can't stop our analysis there if we want to prevent this from happening in the future, because unless things change someone will make this mistake again in the future. Telling people not to make mistakes isn't going to help at all; it's obvious, and no one wants to cause an accident. The error is just the last step in the process that led to the collision.

[rglover]

I don't think the ATC is at fault here. If they were put in a difficult situation and responsible for too much at once, I'd view that as a leadership bug, not their personal fault (or anything they should be held liable for). The weak links imo here are the firetruck driver and whoever that ATC reports to directly (i.e., there shouldn't have been an opportunity for this to happen—that's an executive failure, whether they want to take ownership or not).

[SecretDreams]

The weak link is the system in place which puts so much work on so few staff.

The fire truck received the go ahead. They weigh 3x more than a normal firetruck. They're rushing to a different emergency. The plane is moving fast as hell. They can't just react instantaneously.

The ATC worker is clearly too stretched and such an incident was an inevitability. When they're shouting stop, they are no longer directly talking to the firetruck, which obscures the situation for everyone.

It is a terrible tragedy that will only be prevented with reform in staffing and safety procedures.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

The NTSB’s role is to not to assign blame.

We aren’t in the aviation industry, and neither are we the NTSB.

Prosecutions and convictions do occur as a result of aviation incidents, pilots loose their jobs, pilots loose their licenses, ATC staff can be prohibited from ever working in the industry again.

We free to talk about all of those aspects here.

[joncrane]

The controller was talking to Frontier plane when he first said stop, then said stopstopTruck1stopstopstop and it would be easy for there to be a gap in processing for the driver of truck 1 because the verbiage all flowed in the same stanza that was started when addressing the Frontier flight.

[inaros]

I am afraid the fire truck might have some level of responsibility, since it seems FAA ground vehicle guidance says:

AC No: 150/5210-20A - "Subject: Ground Vehicle Operations to include Taxiing or Towing an Aircraft on Airports"

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

“you must ensure that you look both ways down the runway to visually acquire aircraft landing or departing even if you have a clearance to cross.”

These trucks seem to have pretty good visibility from inside. Not sure if La Guardia model was the same: https://youtu.be/rfILwYo3sXc

[phearnot]

Not arguing with the regulations, just pointing out that based on airport diagram[1], since the truck was crossing rwy on taxiway D, the CRJ was on the right approaching from behind. I have never been inside an airport firetruck, but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

[1]https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e

[inaros]

That is a good point but it seems instructions for ground vehicles seem to really stress this. For example this one: https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/1003.pdf

Says at pag 9:

"While driving on an aerodrome : Clear left, ahead, above and right

Scan the full length of the runway and the approaches for possible landing aircraft before entering or crossing any runway, even if you have received a clearance."

[cucumber3732842]

>but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

They have mostly glass cabs for exactly that reason. Only thing that would block your view is a passenger in the right seat.

[userbinator]

...and that passenger should also be actively looking around.

[caminante]

Visibility was bad (night and mist) too.

But if your truck has blind spots and vis is poor, you shouldn't be driving as fast if at all.

[dghlsakjg]

He was stopped until he received instructions to cross the runway from the person whose job it is to sit in a position with good visibility and tell people when they can cross runways. He wasn’t driving fast at all. The whole system is set up so that vehicles with blind spots (every large passenger jet) can safely move.

We can’t say that emergency vehicles should just stay in on dark and stormy nights.

[caminante]

>from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

..is what I was responding to.

>We can’t say that emergency vehicles should just stay in on dark and stormy nights.

This conclusion is flawed and doesn't apply to what I said.

If a truck can't see (conditions or not), then they shouldn't be on the same runway as takeoff/landing because...the consequences were severe despite the safeguards you mentioned, e.g. Not driving fast is relative and the "eyes" failed too initially.

[vkou]

Every other truck in the column immediately stopped when the call was made. Truck 1 was the only one that didn't.

[dghlsakjg]

They were all, including truck 1, queued up at the stop line waiting for clearance to cross. Truck 1 received clearance to cross, he began crossing, then received instructions to stop after it was too late.

The rest of the emergency vehicles were stopped because they hadn’t been authorized. Truck 1 started moving because he had received specific instructions to do exactly what he was doing.

I take it you’re not a pilot, controller or someone who has ever worked an aviation radio?

[jmtulloss]

FWIW the whole group received permission to cross. The instructions were to "Truck 1 and company", not just Truck 1

[dghlsakjg]

Thanks, I missed that.

[hatthew]

"Truck 1 and company" were cleared to cross. A few seconds later, "truck 1" was instructed to stop.

Edit: Confirmed truck 1 was the one involved in the collision. Previous text: It is unclear which truck specifically was involved in the crash. In photos, the truck has the number 35 on it, not sure if that would preclude it from being identified as "truck 1" verbally.

[dghlsakjg]

Ah. I missed hearing that “and company” in the recording.

In any case, if they were cleared across the runway, and they were, it isn’t really on them. It doesn’t change the gist of the argument. The broader point is that it wasn’t that one truck was barreling around being reckless as implied by gp, it’s just that one truck made it out and the rest of the company had yet to start moving (whether because they saw the plane coming from their viewpoint farther back, or just hadn’t started moving yet, we will find out later). The entire company had stopped at the line, and when cleared across the lead truck was struck. Of course the rest were still stopped behind the line, there was a giant fire truck in their path moments before.

The instruction to stop is, to my pilots ear, irrelevant. Until an instruction is read back by the receiving party, it is worthless. It might not have been received, or received incorrectly. That’s the whole point of the readback, to ensure that the instruction was received correctly (notice how I missed the “and company”… a readback would have caught that). If there is not a readback, controllers are instructed to ask for one. On top of that, it was a panic instruction using non standard verbiage. If he was already past the line, the instruction to stop might have made it worse.

[doubleg72]

“I take it you haven’t ever worked with radio.. “. Seems like you haven’t a clue how any of this works. Doesn’t matter if they had radio clearance, the fire truck is responsible for ensuring runways is clear and not driving in front of plane.

[krisoft]

I very much doubt that you know the exact timing of the event. My guess is that you might have seen a video where some industrious editor put the ATC recordings over the leaked surveilance footage, but there is no way that is correctly synced.

[hatthew]

With publicly available information we can sync it to within ~2 seconds. All trucks other than the first one were definitely in the process of stopping in between the first and second time ATC told them to stop (5 seconds apart).

[sssilver]

> Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?

At Class D airports it’s always been the norm. But KLGA is Class B.

[Yizahi]

I've seen the NTSB footage of the plane and helicopter crash in Washington. It is practically impossible to discern a landing plane over the lights of a big city at night. Next, the truck had been angled away from the plane approach, so it was coming from the right side (passenger side) and at back. There was zero chance that firetruck could have seen the plane in the seconds it covered hundreds of meters, flying at 200+ km/h. And also in that NTSB investigation there was a case of missed comms, when ATC recording clearly showed controller saying an important word, but it jot "jammed" in the process and there was silence at the receiving end instead of that word (in the middle of the transmission). Not saying it was a case here, but it is possible too.

Just like in that collision, it is possible there is no one single person to blame (apparently helicopter pilot was not outside of the legal corridor, despite the speculations), but it was a compounding error issue.

[rdtsc]

Truck was on a different frequency from the aircraft so they couldn’t even hear each others’ clearances.

Also first time ATC told the truck to stop it wasn’t too clear who the message was addressed to. It’s a bit hard to hear “Truck1” there, not clear who he wants to stop. The second time, one can argue by the time “stop” command was heard it might have been better to gun the engine. As the truck sort of slowed down in the middle of the runway.

[bko]

> this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts

What government cuts? 2025 FAA air traffic budget was up around 7% from 2025

https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-faa-...

[sophacles]

Notably 2025 was also the year that Elon started firing people and shutting down things that were in the budget, as well as several shutdowns.

[rglover]

From the article:

> The crash has raised fears that operations at US airports are under extreme stress. Airports have been dealing with a shortage of air traffic controllers, exacerbated by brutal federal government personnel cuts by Donald Trump’s administration at the start of his second presidency.

Not my opinion, just reading from there.

[bko]

So where there budget cuts or not? That was the claim. I have yet to find anything that suggests there were budget cuts, just vague mentions of "brutal federal government personnel cuts".

I'm just looking for: budget was X in <2026 and in 2026 it is Y, where X > Y

[ridgeguy]

Analyze staffing, not budget. That gets more directly at workload.

[rglover]

You said budget cuts, not me.