Major Progress: Investigators have recovered the black box from the Air Canada flight and are now working to recreate the sequence of events before the LaGuardia collision

NTSB investigators have been able to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, Jennifer Homendy told reporters.

In order to retrieve the devices, she said the NTSB, Port Authority and emergency responders had to cut a hole in the roof of the aircraft and drop down to secure them.

They were then taken back to labs in Washington DC, and investigators have ‘been able to at least verify that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged,’ Homendy said.

One of the pilots killed in the Air Canada collision at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday has been identified as Antoine Forest.

Forest, 30, is from Coteau-du-Lac in Quebec, broadcaster TVA Nouvelles reported.

According to his social media, he had worked as a CRJ First Officer with Jazz Aviation since December 2022.

He studied aviation at Cegep de Chicoutim and previously worked as a pilot with Air Saguenay and Exact Air.

Forest was one of the two pilots killed in the crash, and at least 41 other people were hospitalized.

A firetruck was crossing the tarmac just before midnight after being given permission to check another plane reporting an odor on board when the regional jet landed on the runway.

The impact crushed the plane’s nose, leaving cables and debris dangling from the mangled cockpit.

The flight attendant who was strapped into a jump seat and violently thrown dozens of feet outside an Air Canada aircraft when it collided with a truck has been identified as Solange Tremblay.

Tremblay’s daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Quebec broadcaster TVA Nouvelles that her mother suffered a broken leg requiring surgery, but did not sustain any other serious injuries.

‘I’m still trying to understand how all this happened, but she truly must have had a guardian angel watching over her,’ she said.

A passenger on the Air Canada jet that smashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport described the chaotic moment they made impact.

Passenger Jack Cabot said it started as a ‘regular flight like always, but as we were arriving, we came down really hard.’

He said the hard landing saw the pilots ‘stop really quickly’ on the runway, before about two second later ‘there was just an absolute slam.’

‘Everybody was flying everywhere, the plane started veering off left and right,’ he told Fox News.

‘It was chaos, I mean it didn’t feel like there was anybody in control.’

An Air Canada pilot killed when his plane struck a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport has been named – alongside a flight attendant who miraculously survived being hurled out of the doomed jet.

Antoine Forest, 30, died when the Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft he was flying collided with the firetruck at the New York City airport on Sunday night, TVA Nouvelles reported.

Flight attendant Solange Tremblay was strapped into a jump seat and violently thrown 330 feet clear of the aircraft when it collided with the truck, but somehow survived.

Flight attendant hurled 330ft from plane crash who survived

Two pilots were killed, and at least 41 other people were hospitalized when the Air Canada jet struck a fire truck while landing at the New York City airport on Sunday night.

Pilots shared their concerns about miscommunication, air traffic control missteps and other problems at LaGuardia International Airport for two years prior to the crash, CNN reports.

‘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 continued.

‘On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there,’ he said, referring to the January 2025 mid-air collision in Washington DC that killed more than 60 people.

One of the firefighters who was injured when the Air Canada plane crashed into a firetruck at LaGuardia International Airport on Sunday has been released from the hospital.

Officer Adrian Baez was released on Monday while Sgt. Michael Orsillo remains hospitalized, Bobby Egbert, a spokesman for the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association said Monday night.

A passenger on the fatal plane crash said she is ‘forever indebted’ to the pilots’ quick instincts to try to stop the plane, saying without their efforts there could have been more deaths.

‘I felt like the pilots saved our lives,” Rebecca Liquori told CNN’s Erin Burnett. ‘They’re the reasons I was able to make it home safe to see my boys, and my heart goes out to their families.’

Liquori, who has two young sons, said seeing them after the crash was like she ‘won the lotto.’

She recalled how she closed her eyes when the plane crashed into the firetruck, and imagined a world where life with her sons was over.

‘In those few seconds I thought, “Oh my god, I’m never going to see them. I’m never going to get to tickle them. I’m never going to hear their laughs again,”’ she said.

‘I was just very thankful when I opened my eyes,’ she added.

The second pilot killed in the crash has been identified as MacKenzie Gunther.

She served as first officer on Air Canada Express’ Flight 646 from Montreal on Sunday night, working alongside pilot Antoine Forest, 30, of Coteau-du-Lac in Quebec, Radio-Canada reports.

The Federal Aviation Administration is reportedly investigating whether a problem with a United Airlines flight distracted an air traffic controller in the LaGuardia Airport tower on Sunday night.

Two controllers had been working at the tower when the accident occurred at 11.37pm, two people who were briefed on the matter told The New York Times.

One was talking to a fire truck that was en route to assist a United Airlines jet, which had reported a foul odor that was making flight attendants sick. As the controller was then clearing the fire truck to cross the runway, an Air Canada plane was landing in the runway leading to the fatal crash.

Both controllers had been working two positions at the same time, the Times sources noted.

The NTSB is verifying preliminary information about staffing in the air traffic control tower at the time of the crash, chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

‘We have to look at records,’ she said at a news conference. ‘There are sign-in sheets. We have to do interviews. We have to look at time cards. That is information we always have to corroborate.’

Homendy said she hopes to release the information tomorrow.

Her comments came just hours after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy refuted claims that only one air traffic controller was working at the time.

The runway where the crash occurred is going to be closed for days, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

She had earlier expressed how there was a ‘tremendous, tremendous amount of debris’ spread throughout the scene.

‘We have to go through all of that’ to figure out what to collect and take back to the lab, she noted.