The Air Current
Will Guisbond
23 Mar 2026
Several near-misses between aircraft and ground vehicles at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) preceded the late-night March 22 runway collision between an Air Canada Jazz CRJ 900 and a firetruck which killed both pilots and seriously injured dozens, according to a review of public safety data by The Air Current.
In 2015, an Embraer E190 came within about 1,300 feet of an airport vehicle that had driven across the aircraft’s take-off runway without authorization while assisting with scheduled maintenance. That same year, two snow plows crossed the runway hold markings after an air traffic controller had cleared a Boeing 737 for takeoff, placing the vehicles just 180 feet from the airliner. In 2012, a ground vehicle came too close to a runway without authorization and caused an aircraft on final to go around.
Safety reports in public databases show a long history of runway incursions and near-collisions on the ground at the geographically constrained New York City airport...
