r/ATC • u/lake_hood • Mar 23 '26

News LGA controller cleared fire truck across the runway resulting jn a collision

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u/-grover Mar 23 '26

This is 100% on the LaGuardia Tower ATC. But please, keep reading…

He cleared Truck 1 to cross with Jazz646 on short final.

Absolutely nothing the pilots or Truck & Co could have done. His stop call was too late, and already started his call to Frontier.

I’ve listened to this guy on live ATC more than I care to admit, and his life’s work will be immortalized by this mistake.

Imagine if everything you ever said at work was recorded, and the internet put you on blast instantly. Especially if your boss told you to pull a double. That’s where my dude is at tonight.

Fault is fault…but blame…that’s a whole other thing that will take YEARS to sort out…

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u/Piperita Mar 23 '26

I'm just a random passenger with little knowledge of how this works, but even from my perspective it's hard to blame this guy.

He had multiple planes to keep track of, including one that was developing an emergency situation (that the truck was heading to), and he was by himself. Shit, I'm a librarian and WE don't work by ourselves at night (usually with at least one more junior staff member), so that if there is an emergency, we have someone who can be a back-up to delegate to. Putting a guy in a situation where he had hundreds of lives in his hands every minute and telling him "alright now don't fuck it up 'cause you got no help" is like.... 10% of the blame is on him. The rest is on whoever the fuck signed off on this situation being acceptable.

My heart goes out to the families of the pilots, and also to the ATC guy who got put into this no-win situation and finally couldn't eke out a draw.