Eyewitnesses have described the moment Air Canada flight AC8646 crashed into a fire truck on the runway of New York's LaGuardia airport, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of others.
We were literally like 100 meters away, says 23-year-old Leo Medina, who was onboard another plane on the tarmac when the crash happened. It was like the plane got cut in half.
He told the BBC he then had to return to the gate and had been waiting in the airport for more than 12 hours, sleeping on the floor on a bed of jackets.
Passenger Rebecca Liquori, who was on the plane arriving from Montreal that crashed, told News12 Long Island there was a loud boom just after it landed. As we were descending, we hit a lot of turbulence, she said. Then we landed very roughly… Everyone felt it. It was like the plane jolted and you heard the pilot try to brake trying to prevent the collision.
As you heard the brake, a couple seconds later it was just a very loud boom, she said. Everybody jolted out of their seats.
The crash - which happened at 23:40 local time on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday) - resulted in two pilots' deaths and 41 others taken to hospital, with some suffering serious injuries.
Audio from the air traffic control tower at LaGuardia captured the frantic moments before the crash, with a staff member instructing a fire truck to halt its movement. The truck had been called out minutes earlier to assist with a reported issue on another aircraft, according to Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia.
In the aftermath, passengers helped each other down the plane's wing to safety. I'm just happy to be alive, Liquori commented. I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I've done countless times ending like this.
Witness Jack Cabot described the scene as chaotic, narrating, We went down for a regular landing. We immediately hit something and it was just chaos from there.
The incident has caused LaGuardia airport, one of the busiest in the United States, to remain closed with hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled, as investigators work to understand what went wrong.
We were literally like 100 meters away, says 23-year-old Leo Medina, who was onboard another plane on the tarmac when the crash happened. It was like the plane got cut in half.
He told the BBC he then had to return to the gate and had been waiting in the airport for more than 12 hours, sleeping on the floor on a bed of jackets.
Passenger Rebecca Liquori, who was on the plane arriving from Montreal that crashed, told News12 Long Island there was a loud boom just after it landed. As we were descending, we hit a lot of turbulence, she said. Then we landed very roughly… Everyone felt it. It was like the plane jolted and you heard the pilot try to brake trying to prevent the collision.
As you heard the brake, a couple seconds later it was just a very loud boom, she said. Everybody jolted out of their seats.
The crash - which happened at 23:40 local time on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday) - resulted in two pilots' deaths and 41 others taken to hospital, with some suffering serious injuries.
Audio from the air traffic control tower at LaGuardia captured the frantic moments before the crash, with a staff member instructing a fire truck to halt its movement. The truck had been called out minutes earlier to assist with a reported issue on another aircraft, according to Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia.
In the aftermath, passengers helped each other down the plane's wing to safety. I'm just happy to be alive, Liquori commented. I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I've done countless times ending like this.
Witness Jack Cabot described the scene as chaotic, narrating, We went down for a regular landing. We immediately hit something and it was just chaos from there.
The incident has caused LaGuardia airport, one of the busiest in the United States, to remain closed with hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled, as investigators work to understand what went wrong.
