Pilots have raised concerns about miscommunication, air traffic control missteps and other hazards at LaGuardia Airport, according to a CNN review of government records for the past two years.
“Please do something,” a pilot wrote last summer in one of at least a dozen reports about LaGuardia to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System – citing a close call when air traffic controllers failed to provide appropriate guidance about multiple nearby aircraft.
“The pace of operations is building in LGA (LaGuardia). The controllers are pushing the line,” the pilot said. “On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there,” referring to the January 2025 mid-air collision over the Potomac River in Washington, DC that killed more than 60 people.
- READ MORE: Pilots killed in plane crash at N.Y.’s LaGuardia Airport identified
- READ MORE: ‘Stop truck 1. Stop.’ Pilots killed when Air Canada jet crashed at New York’s LaGuardia
- READ MORE: Air Canada plane crash at New York airport may add to travel fears: psychologist
On Sunday, two pilots were killed and dozens of passengers were injured at LaGuardia airport when an Air Canada plane collided with a fire truck in a high-speed runway collision. An air traffic controller had cleared the fire truck to cross the runway and frantically tried to stop it at the last minute, but it was too late. After the crash, he said on the ground radio frequency that he had been “dealing with an emergency earlier” and that he “messed up.”
Only a few months ago, in October, two Delta Airlines regional jets collided on a LaGuardia taxiway, which sent one person to the hospital. And in Newark just this week, a close call occurred when two aircraft were attempting to land on intersecting runways.
In the two years leading up to Sunday’s fatal crash, multiple reports detailed situations where collisions at LaGuardia were narrowly avoided, according to CNN’s review of the voluntary reporting system, which allows employees in the aerospace industry to anonymously flag safety issues and can take several months to include the most recent reports. While the reports are reviewed by a team of safety analysts who are tasked with alerting the Federal Aviation Administration of any hazards, the individual details of each report have not necessarily been verified by government regulators.
In December 2024, for example, a report to the NASA database described how a plane came dangerously close to another aircraft on the ground because of inaccurate instructions from air traffic controllers. And months before that, in July, a copilot reported a similar near collision after controllers said the plane was cleared to cross the runway even though another aircraft was landing at the same time.
“Ground Control issued a stop command just in time,” the report said.
Other reports appear less serious or clear-cut about what went wrong but also cited confusing or dangerous scenarios at LaGuardia, which is considered one of the busiest airports in the country.
Given the chronic understaffing of air traffic control facilities and previous government shutdowns, reports of near misses and concerns about safety are not uncommon about airspaces and runways around the country, other data from the safety reporting system shows.
By Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken, CNN
