By Alison Sider, Jacob Passy and Dean Seal
Some of flying's biggest dangers are on the ground.
In the past five years there have been 26 runway incidents in the U.S. that the Federal Aviation Administration considers the most serious type -- where a collision was narrowly avoided, according to federal data that covers both commercial and private flights.
Another 52 runway incidents had "a significant potential for collision," data show. Those two categories of incidents were down in 2024 and 2025 compared with prior years, after a spate of alarming close calls at airports in Austin, Texas, New York, and Boston in 2023.
Last week, days before the deadly collision between an Air Canada regional jet and an emergency vehicle at New York City's LaGuardia Airport, there was a close call at Newark Liberty International Airport, when an Alaska Air plane flew over a FedEx freighter as both attempted to land on crossing runways at the same time.
Federal investigators said Tuesday they were looking into more than one potential problem that could have played into the LaGuardia accident, including the automatic runway-safety system and staffing.
Sunday's crash, which killed two pilots and injured dozens of passengers and crew, comes at a moment of reckoning for U.S. aviation safety, long viewed as the global gold standard. Last year's midair collision of an American Airlines regional jet and a military helicopter over the Potomac River killed 67 people.
Regulators have been trying for years to stamp out hazards that lead to close-call incidents, from poor airport communication, to poorly lit airfields, to inadequate air-traffic control staffing. The U.S. Department of Transportation has asked for billions of dollars of additional funding to upgrade antiquated systems.
The FAA has said its goal is zero serious close calls. The agency has been installing new systems to allow air-traffic controllers to better track the movement of aircraft on the ground, and to alert controllers when a runway isn't available for departing or arriving planes.
At airports where ground surveillance technology isn't in place, controllers have largely relied on visually separating planes to prevent collisions, according to Hassan Shahidi, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit focused on aviation safety.
Requiring all vehicles, not just aircraft, to have transponders that comply with radar systems could help prevent accidents like the one that occurred at LaGuardia, Shahidi said.
LaGuardia has a ground radar system to track movement of aircraft and vehicles on the ground. The fire truck that collided with the Air Canada jet on LaGuardia's runway didn't have a transponder on it, which means the automatic system that would have generated an alert didn't work properly, said Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Homendy also said the accident may have resulted from multiple failures. At least two air-traffic controllers were in the tower at the time of the collision. It isn't yet clear which one was directing the emergency vehicle, she said. Runways and taxiways are usually managed by separate controllers, but it is common at LaGuardia to combine those duties during "midnight shifts," she added.
Congested airports are another concern. LaGuardia is compact -- squeezed into a relatively small plot along the East River. Located between two other big airports serving the region, its airspace can be complicated, too.
"At some point somebody has to say we've reached the limit for old airports like LaGuardia," said Mary Schiavo, an aviation attorney who was previously inspector general for the Transportation Department.
Prior to Sunday's collision at LaGuardia, storms had delayed dozens of flights that left air-traffic workers at the airport handling more than double the number of flights -- 70 instead of 31 -- than initially scheduled, according to data from analytics firm Cirium.
A preliminary analysis of air-traffic control audio suggests the same controller cleared the jet to land and simultaneously authorized the fire truck to cross the taxiway, according to two audio forensic experts interviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The controller later radioed commands for the truck to stop.
Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com, Jacob Passy at jacob.passy@wsj.com and Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 24, 2026 19:44 ET (23:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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