Both black boxes from the Air Canada runway crash that killed two and left dozens injured have been recovered.
The National Transportation Safety Board recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Air Canada Express CRJ-900 on Monday, the CBC reported. The NTSB, the Port Authority and first responders cut a hole in the roof of the plane to get to the devices, which were not damaged and taken to Washington, D.C.
The investigation continues at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, with little information about what caused the crash. It was the first deadly accident at the airport in more than 30 years, Bloomberg reported.
One controller can be heard on air traffic recording saying, “I messed up” after a fire truck was given the OK to cross the runway. The Air Canada flight was landing and the two collided.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said rumors of only one controller in the tower were not true. He called LaGuardia a “very well-staffed airport” with 33 air traffic controllers, aiming for 37, and seven more are in training, according to WABC.
Two pilots, identified as Antoine Forest and MacKenzie Gunther, were killed in the crash, and more than 40 others were injured.
Two Port Authority police officers, Sergeant Michael Orsillo and Officer Adrian Baez, were identified as those injured in the truck. Orsillo was still hospitalized as of Monday night, but Baez was treated and released, WABC reported.
As for the others, 32 were treated and released, according to WABC, but a flight attendant was thrown from the plane and had several fractures to one of her legs, which will require surgery, the CBC reported.
In all, there were 72 passengers and four crew members on the plane.
The airport reopened Monday afternoon, but the runway where the crash happened remains closed as agencies continue their investigations. WABC reported that it is expected to reopen on Friday morning.
“There is a lot of debris. We need to go through all of that and to figure out what we need to take back to the NTSB, to our labs,” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.
“That’s all evidence and we need to document that first,” she added.
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