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ATC recording on https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php Fire truck was cleared to cross and then told to stop. I'm not su
by cjrp 7mo ago
ATC recording on https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php https://www.liveatc.net/recordings.php
Fire truck was cleared to cross and then told to stop. I'm not sure if they were the only controller working at the time, they continued working after the incident which seems unusual; my understanding is normally they'd be relieved by another controller.
- brownieeee 7mo agoThey were indeed the only controller, working both ground and tower frequencies.
- the_mitsuhiko 7mo agoWhich, as a non informed person but someone who needs to travel by plane, sounds absolutely insane. Was it always possible to staff that with a single person or is that a result of understaffing?
- buckle8017 7mo ago[flagged]
- jdlshore 7mo agoThis sounds like a right-wing conspiracy theory. Are you saying that, in order to hire more black people, the FAA deliberately created a test only black people could pass? Do you have any evidence of this assertion?
- appreciatorBus 7mo ago[flagged]
- cjrp 7mo agoI don't think this explains understaffing though. "The lawsuit doesn’t allege incompetent controllers were hired instead of CTI graduates. Instead, it states that the CTI graduates weren’t given the opportunity to demonstrate their competency." It sounds like they hired different people, rather than fewer.
- appreciatorBus 7mo agoNot a pilot or a controller, just a nerd. My take from reading about it was that a large number of high performing potential ATC controllers who had followed the traditional pipeline were ditched. Ofc it's possible they hired exactly as many ppl as they would have otherwise, but in any job with a long lead time for training, a sudden change in the pipeline is going to cause ripples further on for years to come. Maybe the ppl they did hire had a higher attrition rate so that while they had the same # of ppl in the short term, in the long term, they faced shortages. Maybe some % of those they did hire required some % of extra supervision or training. Ofc not insurmountable or fatal, it just means extra pressure that will exert itself in some fashion for years to come after the initial disruption. I have no idea of last night's incident could be considered downstream of the testing change, I was just responding to the allegation that it was a conspiracy theory, however I also don't think it's implausible that it contributed to it in some indirect way.
- jmalicki 7mo agoMaybe the ppl they hired had a lower attrition rate! Maybe the people hired required less supervision and training than the CTI graduates would have! Maybe this had rippling effects on increasing their hiring pipeline as people of color were more likely to see opportunities here. Your comment presuming it was at best neutral, and any likely change was for the worse is exactly what racism looks like.
- buckle8017 7mo agoExcept they had a much higher attrition rate because ATC is a terrible job.
- jdlshore 7mo agoNote: SideburnsOfDoom looks into the claim below and says, “In summary, spending 5 minutes digging into it gives every impression of it being culture war nonsense.”
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- cameldrv 7mo agoThat seems unusual to me. It’s common at smaller airports, but for a big one like LaGuardia I’d think tower and ground would be two different controllers, even lateish at night like this was. I know there has been a staffing problem for controllers in the NY area for some time.
- bilbo0s 7mo ago[flagged]
- kube-system 7mo agoAre you under the impression that air traffic controllers only work at towers in commercial airports? Your math is based on incorrect assumptions -- the well-documented ATC shortage actually exists.
- bilbo0s 7mo agoDo you know how many towered facilities there are in New York state? 32. Let's assume only 260 ATC for 32 towers. (Not true, but again, we're being friendly to the conspiracy nuts.) We'll further assume every tower is staffed equally. (Also not true, but again, friendly to the nuts.) 8 Controllers for each tower if those assumptions were true. Which they are not. Why is one controller on duty in a commercial airport? Not a public-use airport, a commercial airport? Please stop with the BS.
- kube-system 7mo agoAnd for my next question: are you under the impression that air traffic controllers only work at towers?
- bilbo0s 7mo agoNot at all. But now that I know that you know a bit about ATC. Let's drop the pretense. We're both fully aware that there are right around 1250 ATC controllers in New York state. I further suspect that both of us know exactly how many work LGA. So there's no need to speak in generalities any longer. It's time to get serious about determining what happened in this instance. It appears, from the initial available information, that there was not even a relief on site. That practice needs to stop, and please don't try to tell me we don't have the available staff to bring it to an end. You and I both know that's horse manure.
- wk_end 7mo agoI fly out of a small-to-medium-sized airport in Canada and I've never seen it happen there. The idea of one person being responsible for both tower and ground in the busiest airspace in the US is absolute insanity.
- fakedang 7mo agoAgreed, but isn't O'Hare the busiest airport in the US? Edit:- It's Atlanta.
- rkomorn 7mo agoBusiest airspace and busiest airport are two different things, technically. The airspace that combines JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, is the busiest airspace in the US.
- cpncrunch 7mo agoYVR has had flow control every day for years now, and closes the class C to VFR traffic on virtually any sunny day now, due to staffing problems. It's been happening since long before COVID, but that made it much worse. The controllers simply refuse to take on more traffic than they can safely handle. Lots of pilots here have been complaining for years about how the US controllers are so much better, they can handle much more traffic, etc.
- crooked-v 7mo agoIt's absolutely understaffing.
- ryandrake 7mo agoBut think of the money they saved by not having to pay another air traffic controller! A controller's yearly salary is the cost of about 10 seconds of the Iran war, based on the recently-reported figure of $11.3B for six days.
- ultrarunner 7mo agoI don't think it's money. I think it's requirements and training pipeline restraints. The system is predicated on being able to throw bodies at the problem, but there is a distinct lack of qualified individuals to back that up. Personally, I didn't realize ATC as a possible career path until I was 36-- imagine my surprise when I found that I had already aged out.
- throwway120385 7mo agoWho would want to work that job once they find out what the day-to-day is like? I had an intern who looked at that out of the Air Force but he found out what you get paid and what the expectations are for the job and he figured he'd try his luck on something easier and better-paying like life-preserving medical devices. On a related note, why do you think nobody who you'd actually want teaching public school actually teaches public school in the US?
- eszed 7mo agoI know this is a throwaway comment, but I can't let it pass. > why do you think nobody who you'd actually want teaching public school actually teaches public school in the US? We're currently doing school visits for our kid, in a low-performing school district, and the teachers and administrators we've met have been impressive. I've worked in education, and visited a lot of schools in another professional capacity, so I know the questions to ask, and things to look for. I have no illusions about there being absolutely terrible teachers out there (and I'll tell you some horror stories, if you'd like), and doubtless any (hypothetical) bad teachers at those schools are being kept away from prospective parents, but your statement is hyperbolic in the extreme. The problems in the US school system are legion, but "every single teacher is crap" is not remotely true.
- ryandrake 7mo agoAs an informed person (PPL flying single engine into smallish towered airports all the time), it is absolutely insane for an airport the size of LGA. Occasionally, you will encounter one guy doing tower and ground at very small class D airports or during not-so-busy shifts.
- ultrarunner 7mo agoTo play devil's advocate, ASEL into small deltas is significantly different than receiving full-stop IFRs late at night. This small mistake (and it is initially small, just catastrophic) is a system breakdown, not necessarily a staffing breakdown. Though staffing is definitely a wider issue in the NAS. Edit to add: looking at this incident closer it appears LGA was busy enough to make a single tower/ground controller an obviously bad plan. Still, systemically, there's enough low hanging fruit here, like ADSb in for the airport trucks or hold short line guard lights. I hope the takeaway isn't just "don't have controllers make mistakes".
- ryandrake 7mo agoYea, if you listen to the ATC audio, you can hear that in addition to the normal high workload of handling both ground and tower, this guy had an emergency aircraft on a taxiway to deal with, too. A lot of holes in the swiss cheese lined up, but one of them clearly is ATC workload.
- bombcar 7mo agoPerhaps in a scenario where there is an active emergency and one controller, protocol should be that ground and air frequencies are combined. That would have given the jet a chance to hear the truck cleared to cross the runway they were landing on.
- blitzar 7mo agoEven with multiple staff - the ATC person clearing you to drive across the runway should be the same ATC person doing takeoff / landings on that runway. The audio sounds unsure when giving the clearance - but possibly hindsight ears at work.
- f1shy 7mo agoIt IS insane. Specially for LGA
- banannaise 7mo agoIt's not unusual for airports to reduce staff at night, and the incident occurred at 23:36 local time. Even at a very large airport in a very busy traffic area, one controller can probably handle normal operations at this hour. The obvious problem is what happens when operations become abnormal. ATC shouldn't be staffed for normal operations, because then abnormal operations lead to catastrophe. Welcome to last night: the weather is bad, which causes a plane to abort two takeoffs, which causes that plane to need emergency services. This increases the controller's workload beyond his capacity, so he accidentally clears the emergency vehicle to cross in front of a landing airplane, and they can't see the airplane because the weather is bad, so they follow the instruction and promptly get hit with an airplane. When some bad weather can be the difference between "this is fine, one controller can handle it" and two dead pilots, you need to be staffed for bad weather.
- johnbarron 7mo agoReddit aviation groups are full of professional pilots, saying how terrified they of flying into La Guardia or JFK, recounting close calls, with one saying how he avoided those two for 10 years...
- _moof 7mo agoSpeaking very generally, it's not unusual at all. Tower and ground are combined all the time - at smaller airports. Should they be combined at LGA when both (crossing) runways are in use, and there's an incident on the field? (The fire trucks were on their way to investigate a smell on the flight deck of another airplane that had to abort takeoff twice.) I'd say hell no.
- tejohnso 7mo agoUnderstaffing is no excuse at an airport that size with that kind of airspace. Somebody high up in the food chain with integrity and authority should be closing the runway if staffing is so low that it becomes unsafe. And I'm no expert, but having enough staff for separate air and ground control seems like a minimum safety requirement unless it's a tiny airport.
- gmerc 7mo agoDOGED
- hajile 7mo agoOnly one ATC isn't the issue here. The emergency vehicle was told to stop and did not. Even a dozen ATC wouldn't have helped in that case.
- gameshot911 7mo agoI read that the emergency vehicle may have weighed 60,000 lbs. It can't stop quickly any more than an airplane can.
- hajile 7mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Kqg6sokz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Kqg6sokz4 Watch the video. Other trucks slow down, but truck 1 does not even try to slow down. I'd also argue that driving so quickly that you cannot maintain control is its own problem. Getting to an emergency 20 seconds later almost never matters as much as arriving safely.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- _moof 7mo agoThere is no "the" issue in airline accidents. There are always multiple factors, and all of them had to happen in order for the accident to occur. Understaffing is absolutely a factor. Had tower and ground not been combined, the erroneous clearance probably wouldn't have been issued. The ARFF truck not complying with the stop instruction is absolutely a factor. Had they heard and complied, the accident wouldn't have happened. And there are likely additional factors that will come out in the investigation. I recommend reading some final aviation accident reports from the NTSB to learn more about how these investigations proceed and what kinds of conclusions and recommendations they include.
- deepsun 7mo agoThe fire truck was cleared to cross the runway, but for an unknown reason it waited for 30 seconds before starting to cross.
- caditinpiscinam 7mo agoThat seems like too much for a single person to do, but I can also see how having too many controllers all trying to coordinate amongst themselves could be bad. How do airports determine the optimal number of controllers to have at a given time?
- mmooss 7mo agoThere were two controllers working (and two more in the building): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/nyregion/faa-air-traffic-controller-laguardia-crash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/nyregion/faa-air-traffic-...
- embedding-shape 7mo ago> I'm not sure if they were the only controller working at the time, they continued working after the incident which seems unusual; my understanding is normally they'd be relieved by another controller I remember late last year, couple of months ago, US ATC controllers were without pay but forced to work anyways (similar to TSA I suppose, although I don't think they were forced, but volunteered to work without salary), is that still the situation? Couldn't find any updates about that the situation been resolved, nor any updates that it's ongoing, if so though it feels like it'd be related to the amount of available controllers.
- tialaramex 7mo agoThe US has had trouble keeping enough controllers. It's a skilled but extremely stressful job, and so retention would always be difficult but the US also works hard to make it suck more than it should, and of course the over-work from not having enough people makes that even worse. But no, AIUI only things that were somehow deemed part of "Homeland Security" are frozen, the TSA are part of Homeland Security but the ATC are under the FAA. So this particular partial government funding lapse wasn't causal, at least directly.
- mrguyorama 7mo agoSpecifically, Reagan made a point to cut our nose to spite our face just to not pay ATC workers more money. For political and Ideological reasons. So why the fuck would any talented individual choose to go work for the "Get an example made out of you" department, on top of the horrific stress of the actual job!? The idea of a union that "isn't allowed" to strike is a joke. Next will be a union that has a max membership of 1!
- nradov 7mo agoATCs weren't exactly forced to work: they aren't slaves and are free to quit any time. But if they didn't show up for assigned shifts even though they weren't getting paid then they were subject to disciplinary action including termination. Some of them called in sick, or took on temporary second jobs to bring in some cash (obviously a bad thing from a fatigue management standpoint). After the government shutdown they were paid in arrears for all of the hours they worked. It's crazy that Congress plays political games with essential services like ATC.
- oncallthrow 7mo agoI’m always staggered by how stressed and tbh (not necessarily their fault given the circumstances) unprofessional US ATCs sound. Sharp contrast with Europeans
- f1shy 7mo agoIn Europe is illegal to capture and publish ATC. I don't understand why. Anyway I do not know what are you comparing. From pilot friends, in best case I would say a big “depends” in some countries are very unprofessional, in others very professional (anyway total unfair generalization). There were already accidents because of that, for example because the twr communicated with locals in non english, so not everybody was at the same page.
- floatrock 7mo agoUtterly unqualified to suggest any causes (wait for the NTSB report on that), but couple compounding factors I've read elsewhere to begin to understand the situation and context: - Another plane was out of position, grabbing some attention of the controller - Stop communication was ambiguous about whether talking to previous plane or firetruck - The colliding plane didn't have "explicit" landing clearance, but a "follow previous plane and land the same way unless told otherwise" implicit landing clearance. In Europe, planes need an explicit landing clearance, the act of granting it may have brought attention to the runway contention. US implicit system (arguably) is a bit more efficient, debate will now be is it worth it (pilots are now required to read back instructions because of past blood... will this result in same thing?) - This was around midnight and apparently a little foggy, making visual contacts harder Remember folks, disasters like this are rarely caused by a single factor. NTSB reports are excellent post-mortems that look at all contributing factors and analyze how they compounded into failure. Be human here.
- nradov 7mo agoIn the USA at controlled airports, aircraft also need explicit landing clearance. "Jazz 646, number 2, cleared to land 4." https://youtu.be/Pbm-QJAAzNY?si=h3VEuVNLMf9Z8D1c&t=126 https://youtu.be/Pbm-QJAAzNY?si=h3VEuVNLMf9Z8D1c&t=126
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- f1shy 7mo agoThey did have a very explicit clearance. The controller said “truck 1 stop” that is not ambiguous.
- HDThoreaun 7mo ago> Stop communication was ambiguous about whether talking to previous plane or firetruck "stop stop stop, truck 1 stop stop stop" I mean maybe it was ambiguous for half a second but he pretty quickly said "truck 1 stop". I guess we'll have to wait for the sync up to see if it was too late to stop by then