Two pilots who were on the Canadian Air Express plane died in the accident, while more than 40 others were taken to the hospital. Passengers credited the pilots, Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, with saving their lives.
“I think everybody on that plane is very thankful that they’re all alive, and they’re all giving to the pilots,” said Jack Cabot, who was returning home from a spring skiing trip.
Cabot, 22, told NBC News that he could hear the pilots trying to slow down the plane before the crash. He suffered an injury to his cheek and a sore neck when his head hit the seat in front of him.
Christopher Pal, a professor from Montreal who was attending meetings in New York, recalled that the brakes were “more audible than usual.”
“It happened suddenly, the plane moved slowly left and right, I think, then it stopped,” he said. “Everyone was shocked.”
Pal said he went through the emergency exit on the wing and slid a short distance to the ground. He encouraged others to follow him.
“I just said, ‘Look, jump into my arms, I’ll hold you if you need help.’ So I grabbed some people, I just stayed until it seemed like most of the people had left.”
Pal said he was only injured.
According to the plane’s voice recorder, the truck was cleared to cross the runway 20 seconds before the crash. Nine seconds before the crash, the air traffic control tower ordered the truck to stop, said Doug Brazy, chief aviation investigator for the NTSB, at a news conference Tuesday. At the four-second mark, the tower issued a second stop command.
Photographs of the wreckage showed the nose of the plane had been removed, with the attached pieces hanging from the ground.
According to Homendy, two controllers were on duty in the tower on the night of the crash: the local controller, who controls the active runways and nearby airspace, and the executive controller, who oversees all security operations. The controller in charge also performs the duties of a clearance controller, who provides pilots with clearance, he said.
The NTSB is still trying to identify who was performing the duties of a ground controller, who controls all types of aircraft and vehicles on taxiways.
Although Homendy said it is standard practice for all national airspace to have two controllers at midnight, the NTSB has expressed concern about the practice in the past.
“The midnight shift, as a reminder, is one that we have had many complaints about at the NTSB regarding fatigue,” he said. “I don’t know either, there’s no indication that it had an impact here, but it’s a change that we focused on in the previous investigation.”
Stephen Abraham, a retired air traffic controller with 28 years in the industry, said he understood the agency’s concerns, but stressed that the ongoing labor shortage remains a problem.
“You can’t create or make people,” he said in his speech on Wednesday. “If you put three people in a place [midnight shift]means you have fewer people during the day and at night when it’s busy. Not enough people.”
Abraham said it could be a year before investigators have a full picture of what really happened. He believes the NTSB will ultimately identify “a series of mitigating factors” that contributed to the crash, including weather and emergency conditions on the United flight.
On the night of the crash, a fire truck was responding to a report of a foul odor on a United flight after crew members began to feel ill before takeoff. Bryan Bedford with the Federal Aviation Administration said at a news conference Monday that the airport is experiencing fog, mist, moderate winds, and visibility of up to 4 miles in rainy conditions.
The entire aviation system is designed so if one piece of the equation fails, it still works,” said Abraham. “There are technical devices to prevent these things. There are people who prevent these things, and then there are things that affect people, elements to prevent these things. How many of them didn’t work to make this happen?”
