On Sunday night, an Air Canada plane crashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport in New York, killing the pilot and co-pilot. However, Solange Tremblay, a flight attendant on the plane, miraculously survived a 300-foot ejection from the plane during the crash. According to an expert, this is likely due to a key safety feature in the flight attendant’s jump seat.
It happened at LaGuardia Airport – New York’s third-busiest airport – on Sunday night when an Air Canada Express plane crashed into a fire truck on a runway. Tragically, this led to the death of the pilot and co-pilot, but almost miraculously, a flight attendant on the plane survived a 300-foot ejection from the plane. Reportedly, it was her “robust” jump seat that saved her life, according to a safety expert.
A passenger recorded this video immediately following the deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport.https://t.co/voVpqzHyr0 pic.twitter.com/YFq0Ne7NU7
— Eyewitness News (@ABC7NY) March 23, 2026
As reported by the New York Post, the jump seat was specifically designed to withstand crashes, and Tremblay was seated at the time of the crash, as Flight 8646 t-boned a Port Authority fire truck heading to an emergency at around 11:40 pm.
According to Tremblay’s daughter, the impact of the crash sent her flying 300 feet from the plane, but she only suffered a fractured leg, despite the harrowing experience. Former federal crash investigator Jeff Guzzhetti said the flight attendant escaped largely unscathed due to the special seat, which has a four-point restraint.
“The flight attendant’s seat is kind of a jump seat that folds down and is bolted to the wall, the same wall that the cockpit utilizes,” Guzzetti said. “It’s a very robust seat,” he added. “It’s designed to withstand probably more crash loads than passenger seats because you need the flight attendant to help passengers get out of an airplane after a crash.”
Tremblay’s daughter, Sarah Lepine, spoke to the Canadian news station TVA Nouvelles, telling them that what happened to her mother was a “total miracle.”
“I’m still trying to understand how all this happened,” Lepine said, “but she definitely has a guardian angel watching over her. At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 100 meters (328 feet) from the plane. They found her and she was still strapped into her seat,” she added.
The pilot, Antoine Forest, and co-pilot, Mackenzie Gunther, died instantly when the front of the plane rammed into the fire truck on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport. Shocking video footage of the incident saw the plane crashing into the fire truck, leaving it totally mangled, while obliterating the front of the Air Canada plane.
Fortunately, there were no further deaths, as 41 of the 76 passengers and crew members on the plane were only hospitalized with injuries, mostly minor, according to officials.
Meanwhile, at the time of the incident, the fire truck had been cleared to cross the runway, where it was responding to a separate emergency. Reportedly, the other plane had just aborted its takeoff. Moreover, on the video, soon after the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard admitting that he “messed up,” sending the two vehicles on a crash course.
Air Canada President and CEO Michael Rousseau provides a video statement on the tragic accident involving Air Canada Express AC8646: pic.twitter.com/ZwFibpOkj2
— Air Canada (@AirCanada) March 23, 2026
The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the cause of the plane crash. However, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said on Tuesday that it is likely there were “multiple failures,” leading to the fatal incident. However, they said it was still “too early” to pin the blame solely on the controller.
“We have found in all of our investigations that it is not a single error that led to a terrible tragedy,” Homendy told Fox News,
