Communication problems, faulty equipment and human error were behind last month’s deadly collision between a plane and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. This was evident from a preliminary report from the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Thursday.
The initial investigation shows that human error was the cause of the collision. An air traffic controller gave the fire truck permission to cross the runway while an airplane was approaching. When the air traffic controller realized his mistake, he called for the fire truck to stop.
But one of the two occupants indicated that he ‘didn’t know who that message was addressed to’. “He then heard ‘Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,’ at which point he realized the message was directed at them,” the report states. However, by then it was already too late to prevent the collision.
Transponder
The report also emphasizes the lack of a transponder on the fire truck. According to the researchers, such an instrument would have automatically indicated that the plane and the fire truck were likely to collide. A transponder is a device that responds to radar signals by sending back data, including the altitude of the aircraft at that moment.
