Air Canada Express Flight 8646 had been in the air for barely an hour when it descended through the clear March sky toward Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport just before midnight Sunday. The Bombardier CRJ900LR, operated by Jazz Aviation on behalf of Air Canada, was carrying 72 passengers and four crew from Montreal. By the time it stopped moving, the cockpit was gone. Both pilots were dead. Forty-one people had been taken to hospital. A flight attendant — still buckled in her jumpseat directly behind the pilots — had been thrown 300 feet across the tarmac and was found alive in the darkness.
The collision happened at 11:45 p.m. local time. A Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting truck, responding to a United Airlines flight that had reported an odor on board, was crossing Runway 4 when the CRJ900 touched down at an estimated 93 to 105 miles per hour. The jet struck the truck nearly head-on. The impact destroyed the cockpit and forward galley sections of the aircraft, killing both pilots immediately. The rear fuselage remained largely intact, which is the reason the majority of the 76 people aboard survived.
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