By Austin Ramzy and Gary Mitchell
An Air Canada Express plane collided late Sunday with an emergency vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, and the Federal Aviation Administration said the airport would be closed until Monday evening.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said that at about 11:40 p.m. on Sunday, a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada struck a Port Authority firefighting vehicle that was responding to a separate incident. Jazz Aviation said the preliminary passenger list indicated the aircraft was carrying 72 passengers and four crew members.
The FAA said LaGuardia would remain closed until at least 7 p.m. Monday.
Flightradar24, a tracking platform, said the Air Canada Express CRJ-900, Flight AC8646, was arriving from Montreal and rolling down Runway 4 when it struck the airport firefighting vehicle. The plane's last recorded ground speed was 21 knots, or about 24 miles an hour, Flightradar24 said.
Jazz Aviation is the primary operator of Air Canada Express flights and the largest regional airline in Canada.
Photos showed the front end of the plane sheared off roughly from the spot of the plane's front doors. The extent of any injuries among passengers and crew of the plane and occupants of the ground vehicle wasn't immediately known.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is responsible for investigating plane accidents in the U.S., said a team including Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy would arrive at the scene later Monday. Regulators have been worried for years about runway collisions in the U.S. because of a string of near misses, such as one involving an emergency vehicle crossing a runway in Baltimore.
Write to Austin Ramzy at austin.ramzy@wsj.com and Gary Mitchell at gary.mitchell@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2026 04:23 ET (08:23 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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