By: Emily Nixon
On March 22, an Air Canada jet collided with a Port Authority fire truck on the runway at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, causing two deaths and sending nearly 40 people to the hospital, as reported by the Associated Press (AP).
There were two air traffic controllers in the tower at the time of the collision, but they were allegedly distracted due to an earlier incident, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times (NYT).
“We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up,” an alleged air traffic controller said to a different plane after the incident occurred, according to the NYT.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said, in a press briefing, that the investigation would have to dig deeper into the full context before deciding if the controllers were distracted from their duties during the incident.
“I would caution pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved. This is a heavy workload environment,” said Homendy.
“We still have to determine what happened at shift change, which was around 10:30. We have to determine who else was in the tower, and the facility, and available at the time. We know that controller was still on duty for several minutes afterwards. Normally, they would be relieved. We have questions about that. We also have questions about what else was occurring- what other traffic they were dealing with at the time.”
Despite early assumptions that staffing issues caused the accident, the Department of Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, said, “We are a couple controllers short in total, but it is a very well-staffed airport,” according to NYT. According to the same article, LaGuardia has 33 of 37 air-traffic controller positions filled.
According to a press briefing by Homendy, the Controller-in-charge was performing the duties of the clearance delivery controller, who “provides pilots with their departure clearance,” on top of their other duties to ensure the safety of all operations during their shift.
During the same briefing, Homendy states that it is unclear who was acting as the ground controller during the incident. Ground controllers are responsible for all movements on the airport taxiways, “and that generally excludes active runways,” according to Homendy.
On the night of the incident, the Local Controller and the Controller-in-charge would have shared these duties, although it is unclear which controller was responsible for which duties at that time.
“So, these two positions were combined into two positions, and what we do know is that that is in the standard operating procedures for LaGuardia,” said Homendy. “It’s also common practice across the national airspace where you would have two controllers in the tower cab during the midnight shift.”
The midnight shift usually occurs from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. This shift has been a point of concern for the NTSB in previous investigations.
“The midnight shift, as a reminder, is one that we have, many times at the NTSB, have raised concerns about with respect to fatigue. Again, I do not know- we have no indication that was a factor here, but it is a shift that we have been focused on in past investigations,” said Homendy.
Despite the incident, Homendy reassured potential travelers that the aviation system has been fortified against such incidents occurring.
“We rarely, if ever, investigate a major accident where it was one failure. Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple layers of defense built in to prevent an accident. So when something goes wrong, that means there are many, many things that went wrong,” said Homendy.
Air Traffic Controllers are employees of the Department of Transportation (DOT), which has not been affected by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.
“The [One Big, Beautiful Bill Act] included $75 billion in funding for immigration enforcement through fiscal year 2029, and that money is still available despite the rest of DHS being shut down,” reported Business Insider.
However, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers have not been spared from the DHS shutdown; some have been working without pay for over a month since the shutdown, according to Business Insider.
“Hundreds of TSA employees have quit, and thousands more have called out of work after going weeks without pay,” according to CNN.
In response to long lines and short staffing at airports, U.S. President Donald Trump has deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to help support TSA agents during the shutdown.
“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hard line criminals who have entered our Country illegally, are endangering the USA by holding back the money that was long ago agreed to with signed and sealed contracts, and all,” according to Trump’s post on Truth Social.
ICE Agents have been deployed to 14 airports, including LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to CNN.
The role ICE officers will play in the security process has been unclear due to the lack of training provided to them, according to a press briefing by TSA Union officials.
“You can’t train [the security check process] in a day. You can’t train that in a few hours. That’s months of training with TSA for hired employees,” said Hydrick Thomas, a Marine veteran and TSA employee of more than 20 years, in the press briefing.
“They got ICE doing their little trainings today at certain airports, so I’m like, “how do you train them to do the job TSA employees been doing for years?”
ICE has been highly contested in public opinion, as previously reported by The Vanguard.
On Monday, video footage of ICE officers arresting Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and Wendy Godinez-Lopez at the San Francisco International Airport went viral.
The DHS posted on X that this arrest occurred before ICE deployment to airports.
“This arrest of ILLEGAL ALIENS occurred yesterday on March 22, 2026 — BEFORE ICE officers were deployed to airports to bolster TSA efforts […] While being escorted to the international terminal for processing, Lopez-Jimenez attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers. ICE is working as quickly as possible to repatriate the family unit to their home country of Guatemala,” stated the post.
The deployment of ICE agents has been contested and is seen as counterintuitive to industry officials.
Thomas told CNN, “If you want to bring a tactical force into an environment where you’re required to have customer service and a skill set – a mindset where you know what you’re doing, how to identify something that might be suspicious – they don’t have that training.”