An air traffic controller at LaGuardia Airport can be heard on newly released audio admitting fault in the moments after a firetruck collided with an incoming Air Canada passenger jet on the runway, killing both the pilot and co-pilot.

According to People, the collision occurred around 11:40 p.m. local time on Sunday, March 22, when Jazz Aviation Flight 8646, a CRJ-900 aircraft operating on behalf of Air Canada, struck an aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle on LaGuardia's runway four. The plane was arriving from Montreal, carrying 72 passengers and four crew members.

In the audio, a controller can be heard frantically trying to stop the truck before impact. "Stop, stop, stop, stop, truck 1, stop, stop, stop."

It wasn't enough. The collision happened anyway.

The admission

What followed on the recording is the part that demands the most scrutiny. In a conversation between controllers after the crash, one described what he had just witnessed. "That wasn't good to watch."

Another controller then offered what amounts to a real-time confession:

"Yeah, I know. I was there. I was trying to reach out to 'em to stop. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up."

A colleague responded reassuringly, telling the controller he "did the best you could." The audio also captures a controller giving the go-ahead to cross the runway, though the exact wording of that clearance has not been made public. It's unclear how the firetruck responded in the moments before the collision.

That a controller would openly acknowledge error in the immediate aftermath tells you something about the gravity of what unfolded on that runway. The question now is what systems, staffing levels, and protocols allowed a situation where a controller was juggling a prior emergency while an active runway had a vehicle crossing into the path of a landing aircraft.

The toll

A Port Authority spokesperson confirmed the worst of it in a statement: "The pilot and co-pilot of the Jazz Aviation flight were pronounced deceased."

Beyond the two fatalities, 41 people were transported to the hospital: 39 passengers or crew from the aircraft and two firefighting officers from the truck. Kathryn Garcia, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's executive director, said in a news conference that 32 of the 41 had since been released.

The National Transportation Safety Board and LaGuardia both confirmed on X that the firetruck had been responding to a separate incident when the collision occurred. LaGuardia was closed through at least 2 p.m. on Monday, March 23.

What the investigation will examine

Garcia told reporters that the probe will consider the speed the plane was moving, air traffic control staffing, and whether anyone was ejected from the aircraft. The NTSB and FAA will lead the investigation, the FAA confirmed in a statement.

The staffing question matters enormously. Air traffic control shortages at major airports have been a persistent concern for years, and when a controller tells a colleague on tape that he was still managing a prior emergency when a fatal collision unfolded, the staffing picture becomes more than a bureaucratic talking point. It becomes a potential cause.

Controllers at facilities like LaGuardia operate under extraordinary pressure in the best of circumstances. Late-night operations, overlapping emergencies, and an active runway with vehicles crossing: that is the kind of scenario where thin margins evaporate. One miscommunication, one delayed radio call, and two pilots never walk off the plane.

Accountability starts with the facts

There will be a natural impulse to treat the controller's admission with sympathy. And on a human level, hearing someone reckon in real time with a fatal mistake is gut-wrenching. But sympathy and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Two people are dead. Dozens were hospitalized. The traveling public deserves to know whether this was an isolated human error or the predictable result of systemic failures that officials have been slow to fix.

The audio doesn't lie. It doesn't spin. It captures a man who knows what just happened and why. The investigation needs to follow that thread wherever it leads: into staffing decisions, into protocols for runway crossings during active operations, and into whether the infrastructure at one of the nation's busiest airports has been allowed to run on margins too thin to absorb a single mistake.

Two pilots flew into LaGuardia on a routine Sunday night. They never left.