Investigators believe multiple failures led to deadly LaGuardia Airport collision

Now, the latest on the collision at New York's LaGuardia Airport Sunday night that killed

two pilots and injured dozens more.

The National Transportation Safety Board said today it was likely a series of failures

that led to the accident when an air candidate jet struck a fire truck responding to a possible

emergency with another plane.

Many questions remain, but we learned today that a runway warning system failed to sound

the alarm moments before the accident and that a fire truck was given permission to cross

the runway less than 30 seconds before they collided.

Two controllers were unduty.

For more, we're joined now by our science and aviation correspondent, Miles O'Brien.

Miles, it's good to see you.

So what more did we learn today from the NTSB and the timeline presented today?

Well, the timing itself, Jeff, is kind of breathtaking.

The controllers in the tower there, two of them, were dealing with an emergency on the field.

A 737 United Airlines had fumes in the cabin.

Flight attendants were feeling sick.

And so the crew made the decision to evacuate the passengers off the aircraft and that's

what precipitated the need to get emergency trucks on the way to this other aircraft.

The tower team continued pretty much normal operations allowing the air candidate aircraft

to continue its approach.

And only 20 seconds before it was to touch down, gave it clearance to cross the runway.

That is extremely tight and the controller later said, quoting him now, I messed up.

But it's not so much an individual's responsibility in this case when you look at the whole system

and how it failed.

Miles, we have spoken on this program in the past about the concerns over air traffic

controller staffing.

And one of the questions that came up during the press conference today was the fact that

the air controller in charge was doing the duties of two positions.

Here's what the NTSB chair, Jennifer Hammond, he said.

In this situation for the midnight shift, it is standard operating procedure that they

only have two on duty and those two perform the duties of other controllers.

That is our understanding right now.

However, we're going to further dig into that as part of our investigation.

Certainly I can tell you that our air traffic control team has stated this is a problem,

this is a concern for them for years, that they have had this concern for quite a long

time.

So that's the SOP.

You have two controllers staffing one shift.

Is that even safe?

Yeah, you know, safe is a hard thing to, you know, put a line, the sand on, but they've

been doing it for years with two people.

And it is on a standard operating night, a normal night.

You can get away with it they have for years and years.

Is it safe?

Well, if something goes awry, maybe it isn't.

Maybe you need the two additional people that the NTSB would have recommended in this

case to manage the emergency that was unfolding as that occurred.

And so clearly there is a staffing issue here.

And for the FAA to try to sidestep this is just not being fully honest with the situation.

We know air traffic control is way understaffed.

We know the difficulties the FAA has had in hiring people to become properly staffed, takes

a long time to do it.

And we know that this has a factor to play in a lot of situations when people are stressed

mandatory over time working long hours.

Sometimes hard to quantify how that impacts safety, but it's always there.

The other thing we learned today, Miles, is that the fire truck that was involved in

this collision didn't have a transponder.

Why would that have mattered?

Well, this is one of those layers of redundancy we've been talking about, Jeff, right?

You've got fewer people in the tower.

And now we've got apparatus at La Guardia as busy piece of concrete on the planet when

it comes to aviation running around without a transponder, and a transponder basically

turns sort of a blurry blip on a radar into a very specific piece of identification that

would say, hey, that's fire truck number one.

I can see it over there and would have given the controllers way more visibility than

that blip, which ultimately was not enough to give them any level of alarm or concern.

So yes, a simple device like a transponder in the apparatus that are running around airports

is fundamental and should have been in it for sure.

And Miles, as you said, we know that fire truck was responding to another aircraft

the United Airlines plane.

Yeah, this is the thing at the foundational issue here to me is you had an emergency on

the field at La Guardia.

The first thing that should have been done is a matter of road procedure is stop all

arrivals.

Air Canada, go around, discontinue your approach while I've sort this problem out.

And I think there's a certain psychology problem here is that these controllers are in a high

pressure job where they're trying to maintain a certain tempo to allow the number of arrivals

into parkers in a place like La Guardia, which is incredibly stressful high tempo.

And I think, frankly, they try to perform at that level no matter what.

As I said, so many times controllers on a daily basis perform heroic acts in order to

make this system safe.

We should not be relying on heroic acts.

And when those controllers are in that heroic mode, they may decide, well, maybe I can sneak

one more departure in or arrival in this case.

And then simultaneously handle that emergency.

It's a mindset that needs to change.

It needs an aviation correspondent, Miles O'Brien.

Miles, our thanks to you as always.

You're welcome, Jeff.