The LaGuardia Airport had long been criticized as a potential disaster before Sunday night’s deadly runway crash that took two lives. A number of pilots had spoken up about concerns in recent months. “This place will kill someone soon. PLEASE DO SOMETHING!” one pilot wrote in NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System last summer, a Daily Mail report reveals.
“The pace of operations is building in LGA (LaGuardia). The controllers are pushing the line,” the pilot cautioned, according to a CNN review of government records. The pilot pointed to a near-miss at the New York airport, saying air traffic controllers failed to properly manage multiple aircraft operating in the same airspace.
🚨 UPDATE: Antoine Forest and MacKenzie Gunther have been identified as the Captain and First Officer from the Air Canada Express Flight 8646 that collided with a fire truck on a runway at LaGuardia Airport.
In a miracle story, flight attendant, Solange Tremblay, survived the… pic.twitter.com/RKvrbNufH8
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 24, 2026
The LaGuardia Airport report warned that “on thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there,” referencing the January 2025 midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter over Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. That disaster, attributed to dangerously congested airspace, left 67 people dead and triggered urgent calls for reforms to the nation’s air traffic control system.
However, aviation experts and officials say that more than a year later, little has been done to address those warnings — concerns that resurfaced following Sunday’s LaGuardia Airport crash involving an Air Canada aircraft and a runway vehicle. The late-night collision killed both pilots aboard the Air Canada jet and left 41 others hospitalized.
Sunday’s crash wasn’t the first frightening incident at LaGuardia. Pilots have filed multiple reports of near-disasters at the airport to NASA’s aviation safety reporting system in recent years. Two Delta Air Lines planes collided on a taxiway back in October after one ripped off the wing of the other as they tried to navigate congested LaGuardia, hospitalizing one person.
BREAKING: MacKenzie Gunther is identified as second pilot killed in Air Canada crash at LaGuardia, in New York.
He served as the first officer on Air Canada Express Flight 646 from Montreal on Sunday night, working alongside pilot Antoine Forest, 30, of Coteau-du-Lac in Quebec pic.twitter.com/2TMEubjqDj
— Clash Observer (@clashobserver) March 24, 2026
Pilots and LaGuardia air traffic controllers have blamed persistent communication problems and staffing shortages at the busy New York airport and said they fear passengers could be endangered. Another report submitted earlier to the database details how in December 2024 a plane nearly hit another aircraft while on the ground after what the pilot described as “erroneous” air traffic control instructions.
The circumstances surrounding the LaGuardia Airport crash appear strikingly similar. A firefighter driving a truck ignored a warning from an air traffic controller and crashed into an airplane, in one of a series of near misses.
The controller had told the firetruck to drive across a runway to investigate a United aircraft with mechanical problems. Seconds later he tried desperately to stop the vehicle on the airport runway – only to warn the truck driver too late, and it smashed into an Air Canada plane.
In July 2023, a pilot had also narrowly avoided crashing two planes together after an air traffic controller told one of the planes to cross a runway as another was landing.
The jet’s cockpit is brutally sheared off on impact, exploding into a massive fireball and sending debris flying across the runway.Tragically, both pilots, Antoine Forest (30) and Mackenzie Gunther, were killed instantly. 41 passengers and 2 firefighters were hospitalized pic.twitter.com/kzFNxKfkpP
— ʙʜᴇᴇᴊᴀʏ🍫🪖 (@MrAbolajiTomiwa) March 24, 2026
According to that report, controllers only realized the error at the last moment and “issued a stop command just in time.” Officials have identified the pilots killed in Sunday night’s crash at LaGuardia as Antoine Forest, 30, and co-pilot Mackenzie Gunther.
Both men died on impact, but passengers credited them with taking last-second actions that may have prevented an even greater tragedy. Several described the pilots’ response as heroic, pointing to what they called “incredible reflexes” in the moments before the collision.
Clément Lelièvre, a French national, recalled the moment, telling The Canadian Press he felt the aircraft brake “extremely hard” as it landed around 11:45 p.m. He said that action likely prevented additional fatalities.“I don’t know the circumstances, but I think he kind of saved our lives because he must have had incredible reflexes,” Lelièvre said.
“Seneca sends our deepest condolences to Mr Gunther’s family and friends and to his former colleagues and professors,” the school said in a statement. “He will be deeply missed.” As federal investigators work to determine the cause of the deadly collision, those who knew the two pilots are remembering them for their passion and commitment to aviation.
“These were two young men at the start of their careers,” Federal Aviation Administrator Brian Bedford said. “It’s an absolute tragedy that we’re sitting here with their loss.”
Forest was born in Coteau-du-Lac, Quebec. His great-aunt Jeanette Gagnier told the Toronto Star that he became interested in flying at age 16. She remembered Forest asking her when he was in Grade 11 if he could live with her in Ontario so he could go to school there and learn better English in hopes of becoming a pilot.
“He was always taking courses and flying,” said Gagnier, whom Forest listed as his grandmother on Facebook. “He never stopped.”
Forest later worked as an assistant engineer with Canadian Helicopters Limited before moving through several Quebec-based aviation roles as an apprentice and first officer, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Forest began working for Jazz Aviation as a first officer on Air Canada Express routes out of Montreal in 2022. Gunther graduated from Seneca Polytechnic Institute with an Honors Bachelor of Aviation Technology degree in 2023. He was able to join Jazz through its Pathways program, which helped him start flying soon after graduation.
