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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The aircraft involved, registered as C-GNJZ, was a 20-year-old CRJ900LR — a workhorse of North American regional aviation. Jazz Aviation operates dozens of the type; the CRJ900 series has a generally strong safety record. The problem that emerged in the first hours of investigation was not the airplane. Air traffic control audio showed that the fire truck, designated Truck 1, had received clearance from a ground controller to cross Runway 4. Moments later, another controller realized the aircraft was on final approach and urgently ordered the truck to stop — but the collision happened seconds later.
Eighteen minutes after the crash, a controller was captured on frequency apparently saying, "I messed up." That phrase has become the lede of every major news report Monday, but the NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy cautioned against premature conclusions. The full investigation — which will examine cockpit voice recorder data, flight data recorder readings, ATC audio, and the fire truck crew's account — will take months. Homendy confirmed both black boxes had been retrieved and driven to the NTSB's Washington laboratories overnight.
The human detail that has stayed with reporters and investigators is the story of Solange Tremblay, a flight attendant identified Monday by her daughter Sarah Lépine to CNN affiliate TVA Nouvelles. Tremblay was strapped into her jumpseat in the forward galley, directly behind the pilots, when the collision occurred. The force of the impact ejected her — still in the seat — more than 300 feet across the runway. She was found alive, conscious, and suffering multiple fractures including a broken leg. She underwent surgery Monday morning. The fact that she survived at all, given the seat's proximity to the point of impact, has struck aviation safety experts as extraordinary.
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Of the 41 hospitalized, most sustained broken bones and bruises. One passenger suffered a brain bleed. Two Port Authority ARFF officers from the fire truck were also hospitalized. The two pilots, described by officials as "young men at the start of their career," have not been formally identified pending next-of-kin notification. Both were based in Canada.
LaGuardia closed immediately after the collision — the airport's first fatal crash in three decades — and remained shut through Monday morning. It reopened at 2 p.m. with a single active runway. The runway where Flight 8646 came down will remain closed until at least Friday at 7 a.m., per FAA notices. The timing is wrenching: LaGuardia is already one of the most constrained airports in the United States, operating on a slot system because demand permanently exceeds capacity. A single runway reduces effective throughput by roughly half, guaranteeing delays and cancellations well beyond Monday.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed condolences and said Canadian officials were assisting with the investigation. President Trump, speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, called the crash "terrible" and said aviation is "a dangerous business" and that "a mistake was made." That last phrase — offered without further elaboration — carried its own implications given the early focus on the air traffic control decisions.