By Alyssa Lukpat and Mariah Timms
The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday it was investigating more than one potential problem that could have played into the deadly LaGuardia Airport crash Sunday night.
Conflicting records from air-traffic control about the timing of a shift change and how it had divided responsibilities for the overnight watch leave key questions still unanswered in the early stages of the investigation, Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, said Tuesday.
The shift included an air-traffic controller in charge, responsible for the safety of all operations, and a local controller, who oversaw active runways.
Ground control confusion
The two workers also picked up the duties of clearance delivery controller and ground controller on Sunday night, communicating with pilots ready to depart and managing all aircraft and vehicle movements on taxiways, respectively. Homendy said investigators had conflicting information about who was doing the ground controller's duties.
On other shifts these responsibilities would often be handled by two more workers, she said, but doubling up these duties is standard for the midnight shift at many airports.
"The midnight shift, as a reminder, is one that we have many times at the NTSB raised concerns about with respect to fatigue," she said.
Homendy said the two air-traffic controllers changed shifts at 10:30 p.m., before the crash, but a controller was still on duty for several minutes after the logged handover. "We have questions about that," she said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that the airport was well-staffed but had a shortage of fully-trained air-traffic controllers.
Missing transponder
Investigators also plan to review potential failures of technology that might have contributed to the collision.
The crash happened before midnight Sunday when a firetruck was headed toward an aborted United Airlines flight. An air-traffic controller had cleared the vehicle to cross the runway but soon tried to halt it. "Stop stop stop stop truck 1," the person said over a radio.
The Air Canada Express plane, arriving from Montreal, struck the firetruck on the runway, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of other people. The NTSB declined to identify the two pilots on Tuesday.
The firetruck didn't have a transponder on it, which means the automatic system that would have generated an alert didn't work properly, Homendy said.
Investigators didn't yet know whether the firetruck drivers heard the call to stop, Homendy said Tuesday.
Voice recorder review
The NTSB said it was reviewing information from a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder recovered from the wreckage. Homendy said according to the voice recorder, the first officer was flying the plane and transferred control to the captain just seconds before the collision.
"Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple, multiple layers of defense built in to prevent an accident," Homendy said at a news briefing Tuesday. "So when something goes wrong, that means many, many things went wrong."
LaGuardia, in New York City, reopened on Monday afternoon. One of its two runways remained closed on Tuesday, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport.
The crash compounded issues at LaGuardia, where passengers have waited in hourslong security lines during the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Mariah Timms at mariah.timms@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 17:09 ET (21:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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