Update on Air Canada and Fire Truck Collision Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has revealed that the ASDE-X runway safety system failed to provide an alert prior to the tragic crash between an Air Canada plane and a fire truck last Sunday night.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy indicated that the system couldn’t track the fire truck because it lacked a transponder. “For ASDE-X to work well, it needs to know where ground vehicles and aircraft are located,” Homendy stated, emphasizing the absence of a transponder in the truck.
She further explained that the system is designed to help air traffic controllers monitor the movements of both aircraft and ground vehicles. However, the ASDE-X system did not trigger an alert due to the nearby vehicles converging close to the runway. This situation made it unable to generate a reliable trajectory, according to safety system analysis quoted by Homendy.
The ground collision resulted in the deaths of two pilots and left 41 individuals hospitalized. At the time of the incident, Homendy noted there were only two personnel in the tower’s cab. While it’s common for LaGuardia Airlines to assign multiple responsibilities to night controllers, the NTSB’s air traffic control team has voiced concerns about this practice for quite some time.
Investigators are now working through contradictory information regarding the specific duties assigned during the incident. Furthermore, Homendy pointed out the NTSB’s ongoing worries about fatigue among nighttime shift workers, although she clarified that there is currently no evidence suggesting fatigue played a role in this crash. She urged caution, advising against prematurely blaming air traffic controllers while the facts are still being gathered.
“We rarely, if ever, investigate serious accidents due to a single failure,” she explained, adding that multiple factors typically contribute to such incidents. “When something goes wrong, it means so many things went wrong,” she noted.
