A critical gap in basic airport safety technology left a major U.S. runway effectively blind in the moments before a fatal collision last month, according to federal investigators. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board into the crash at LaGuardia Airport found an emergency firetruck lacked a transponder—preventing the airport’s surface detection system from tracking it as an Air Canada Express flight approached to land. Two pilots were killed and dozens were injured. “Without transponder-equipped vehicles, the ASDE-X system could not uniquely identify each of the seven responding vehicles or reliably determine their positions, or tracks,” the report said. “As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1 … and did not predict a potential conflict.” The jet had been cleared to land roughly 20 seconds before emergency vehicles began moving. The aircraft was just 130 feet above the runway when the truck was cleared to cross. Controllers issued urgent stop instructions, but a crew member said they “did not realize the command was meant for them” until entering the runway. Investigators say runway warning lights also extinguished seconds before impact.
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