Pilots Killed at LaGuardia 'Had No Options'

Two young pilots at the start of their airline careers have been identified as the only fatalities in Sunday night's runway crash at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Authorities on Tuesday named captain Antoine Forest, 30, and first officer Mackenzie Gunther as the Air Canada Express crew members killed when their regional jet struck an airport fire truck while landing shortly before midnight. Colleagues and family described Forest, a former Quebec bush pilot and wildfire spotter, as safety-minded and outdoors-obsessed, per the New York Times. He'd been working for flight operator Jazz Aviation for more than three years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Gunther was a 2023 Seneca Polytechnic graduate.

These were "two young men at the start of their career," said Federal Aviation Administration Chief Bryan Bedford. They "left their homes expecting to return to their families, and they will not," said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, describing an aviation disaster "we have not seen here in over three decades." All 72 passengers and two flight attendants survived, though more than 40 were taken to hospitals. Federal investigators say an aborted United Airlines takeoff had prompted the fire truck's deployment, and that both the rescue vehicle and Flight 8646 from Montreal were cleared onto the same runway, raising questions about controller workload, staffing, and technology.

Experts say the pilots had little chance of survival as the fire truck pulled out in front of their plane as it landed. The nose of a commercial jet is not designed to withstand a collision at such high speeds. "They really had no options," a former investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada tells the Globe and Mail. "There's no place they could go." "You again left like the wind too soon for us to say goodbye," Forest's brother, Cédric Forest, wrote on social media. "You can leave with your head held high." Indeed, a passenger tells City News that the pair "chose to hit the brakes as hard as they could" and "saved easily 70 lives" even if they could not save their own.