Washington, DC
After this week’s lethal collision at LaGuardia Airport, considerations about how a lot is an excessive amount of for one air traffic controler to deal with have reopened.
Sometimes, controllers within the tower are accountable for planes making ready to take off and may also be tasked with dealing with these within the air or on the bottom.
“It happens in every facility as the traffic winds down, especially at night. You begin to combine positions,” stated Harvey Scolnick, a retired air traffic controller, who labored for 42 years for each the navy and Federal Aviation Administration. “When the time permits, you combine it to one position — ground control, local control, clearance, delivery — you combine them down to one position. But you try to do it at such a time when the traffic permits.”
On Sunday, simply earlier than midnight, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was touchdown at LaGuardia Airport when it plowed right into a firetruck. Two controllers have been working within the tower cab on the time, the highest of the tower that appears out over the airfield, the NTSB confirmed on Tuesday.
The “local controller” was answerable for energetic runways and the speedy airspace surrounding the airport. The “controller in charge” was a supervisor accountable for the protection of operations, and that evening, they have been additionally assigned to provide pilots departure info. One of them – the NTSB continues to be attempting to find out which one – was additionally accountable for the plane and autos on the bottom.
The aircraft had 72 passengers and 4 crew members on board for the one-hour flight from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia. The two pilots died and dozens of passengers and two firefighters within the emergency automobile have been injured.
While it’s far too early to know what prompted the crash, National Transportation Safey Board Chair Jennifer Homendy stated there’s a systemic difficulty when positions are mixed because of brief staffing through the late-night hours.
“Our air traffic control team has stated this is a problem, that this is a concern for them for years,” Homendy informed reporters on Tuesday. “I can understand it’s a concern, especially if there’s a heavy workload.”
Two controllers have been working through the midnight shift on Sunday, which can have been commonplace for LaGuardia at the moment of the evening. The NTSB will examine if that process was sufficient.
NCS aviation analyst and former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz says combining air traffic management positions may go throughout a standard drop in flights late at evening, however he believes it “will be determined as a contributing factor to this accident.”
Goelz says traffic at LaGuardia that evening surged because of earlier dangerous climate and delays because of the TSA staffing shortages at airports nationwide, with dozens of late arrivals overwhelming what is usually a lowered workload.
“The reality is you have to staff for the ultimate bad evening,” Goelz stated. “You need to be able to pick up a challenge when you’ve had storms, when you’ve had delays.”
Instead, he stated, controllers are sometimes left managing an excessive amount of directly in an already strained system.
“We’re working with an antiquated system and a workforce that is overworked and undermanned,” he stated. “That is just a deadly combination.”
As air traffic continues to extend, Goelz warned combining air traffic management positions is “really just playing with fire.”
Yet, Scolnick stated if there have been any questions on compromising security, a supervisor would ask a controller to remain later for extra time.
“It seemed to me that it wasn’t a terrible decision to combine positions there, but they did,” Scolnick stated. “It was just a freak accident.”
Combining positions is an issue the NTSB has tried to navigate earlier than.
When an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided in January 2025 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, investigators found one controller was overloaded managing two positions.
“The tower team’s loss of situation awareness and degraded performance due to the high workload of the combined helicopter and local control positions” was listed as one of many elements that prompted the collision that killed 67 folks.
An unbiased panel, commissioned by the FAA in 2024, discovered that combining positions generally is a signal staffing is just not adequate to securely handle demand, notably throughout busy intervals.
It additionally highlighted a key vulnerability: Controllers working midnight shifts reported feeling least rested and least mentally sharp and located that using mixed positions elevated controller fatigue over time – particularly when layered with climate disruptions, prolonged shifts or emergencies.
Just earlier than Sunday’s collision, controllers have been coping with one other aircraft that had declared an emergency after aborting a takeoff and smelling an odor on the aircraft. It was that emergency the controllers have been sending the firetruck to when the collision occurred.
The panel that issued the 2024 report, additionally urged the FAA to additional research how alertness and fatigue are monitored — and underscored considerations that consolidating tasks can scale back security margins at precisely the improper time.
Air traffic management is a excessive stress setting – the choices made are essential to security, and after an accident each motion by the controllers concerned are scrutinized, however Homendy warned towards “pointing fingers” on the air traffic controllers within the tower that evening.
“Our aviation system is incredibly safe because there are multiple, multiple layers of defense built in to prevent an accident, so when something goes wrong, that means many, many things went wrong,” she stated.
Eighteen minutes after the collision, one controller appeared responsible himself for the crash in a dialog with a pilot who noticed it occur.
“That wasn’t good to watch,” the pilot stated in audio recorded by LiveATC.web.
“Yeah, I know. I tried to reach out to them,” the noticeably distraught controller stated. “We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
The pilot responded, “Nah man, you did the best you could.”
Following the incident, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents controllers, stated it will help the controllers concerned by the union’s Critical Incident Stress Management program.
“Air traffic controllers work every day to keep passengers and cargo moving safely and efficiently,” the union stated in an announcement shortly after the incident. “We serve quietly, but moments like this remind us of the responsibility we carry—and how deeply it stays with us when tragedy occurs.”
The NTSB will even examine why the controllers continued to direct planes for a while after the crash.
“We have questions about that. Was anybody available to relieve that controller? We don’t know that yet,” Homendy stated.
Another lingering query: who was controlling the planes on the bottom?
Scolnick known as it “very weird” that the NTSB couldn’t instantly affirm who was doing floor management. He stated controllers ought to’ve signed off on a log that evening for their positions.
“When they say they’re not sure, it could be that they forgot to sign the log over, and they need a witness to tell them what happened,” Scolnick stated. “That’s a possibility.”
The FAA has wanted to rent and prepare 1000’s of latest air traffic controllers to totally workers the nation’s air traffic management system however has struggled for years to recruit sufficient folks to beat the scarcity.
Last 12 months, the FAA and Department of Transportation made efforts to “supercharge” air traffic management hiring, providing a streamlined course of and pay incentives.
In September, the DOT stated it met its hiring targets for the 12 months by recruiting greater than 2,000 folks, however then a setback – the longest shutdown in American history. Due to that lapse in funding, some trainees dropped out of the air traffic management academy, in line with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
The DOT additionally incentivized controllers approaching the obligatory retirement age of 56 to remain on the job in 2025. A lump sum cost of 20% of the essential pay of a retirement eligible controller was promised for annually they proceed to work.
The FAA informed NCS it’s nonetheless scheduling trainees to enter the Academy in early 2026. Duffy’s plan is “on track to hire at least 8,900 new air traffic controllers through 2028,” in line with the FAA.
Despite a significant push to improve methods, decades-old expertise continues to be being utilized by controllers.
After the January 2025 midair collision over the Potomac River, heightened consideration focused on the “floppy discs” and “paper strips” nonetheless being utilized by controllers to handle air traffic.
In May, the DOT introduced it will exchange the infrastructure by constructing a completely new air traffic management system for $31.5 billion. The president’s funding invoice that handed final 12 months secured $12.5 billion to start out work.
“This is 2026,” Homendy stated Tuesday. “The secretary talks about upgrading our air traffic control system. We have an old air traffic control system. This is why he talks about that. We need to upgrade, but we also need to improve safety across the air. It’s not just air traffic control; it’s safety all around.”