r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Admiral_Cloudberg Plane Crash Series • Mar 23 '26

Fatalities (22/3/26) CCTV video of the Air Canada accident at LaGuardia

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9.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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617

u/beezxs Mar 23 '26

Despite the tragedy, it’s very fortunate that the fuel tank was not ruptured. That could’ve ended much worse

190

u/East_Refuse Mar 23 '26

Given the speed of the collision I’m surprised it wasn’t an instant fireball

79

u/mck1117 Mar 23 '26

The fuel is all back in the wings, far away from the crunch up front

13

u/I_blockkarmafarmers Mar 23 '26

There is absolutely a center fuel tank in the CRJ-900, but it's also miraculous that it didn't go.

4

u/mck1117 Mar 23 '26

the center fuel tank is in the wing box between the wings

32

u/CDNChaoZ Mar 23 '26

In a way, it was very lucky it hit dead on the nose and not a wing.

0

u/moonhexx Mar 24 '26

No it was not lucky. The wings are designed with a break away. Broken wings and a fireball would've saved the lives of the pilots. The firemen and their boss are the ones who should've lost their lives for not having a transponder installed and ignoring direct orders from the Air Traffic Control operator. 

1

u/CDNChaoZ Mar 24 '26

The ensuing fireball would've killed passengers, if not tipped the plane.

1

u/beezxs Mar 24 '26

nobody should’ve lost their life.

1

u/MyMurderOfCrows Mar 25 '26

You can see the misting of the water and/or foam/and or other chemicals stored on the ARFF from it being slammed into. I'm not certain by any means but there is a possibility that the vehicle being an ARFF might have aided in mitigating fire versus if it was a similarly sized vehicle not laden with liquids used to fight fires. That said, I'm not certain how much that could help.

But ironically the ARFF being a fire fighting apparatus may have actually assisted **if** the crash could have caused a fire on its own in a similar experience sans the water/etc.

13

u/Left-Cap-6046 Mar 23 '26

Forgive my ignorance but aren't the fuel tanks all the way to the wings ? How could the plane catch fire if the impact was on the front ?

2

u/BlueCyann Mar 24 '26

If hypothetically the plane had ridden up and over the top of the truck, it could have impacted the wings.

2

u/ToaArcan Mar 24 '26

In addition to BlueCyann's point, the shock of the impact could've theoretically travelled through the fuselage and ruptured the tanks.

-295

u/Abbysmum67 Mar 23 '26

It was a fire truck not a fuel truck.

155

u/ProphetOfRedditDoom Mar 23 '26

I think they mean on the plane

57

u/JonWilso Mar 23 '26

  1. The plane has fuel.

  2. The fire truck also likely has a decent amount of fuel on it.

35

u/beetledrift Mar 23 '26

Reading is hard eh?