By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) – One of two runways that has been closed since Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport after a fatal collision between an Air Canada Express plane and fire truck reopened Thursday ahead of schedule, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said arrival rates on Runway 4 would remain reduced after resuming operations after the incident that killed two pilots.
The FAA had predicted earlier this week the runway would not reopen until Friday. The Port Authority said after removal of the plane and truck late Wednesday, the runway was repaired, inspected, and confirmed to meet FAA regulations for safe operation.
National Transportation Safefy Board chair Jennifer Homendy said investigators have been conducting interviews with controllers on duty at the time of the incident this week.
Homendy said earlier this week tracking technologies designed to prevent runway collisions did not work, saying
the airport’s ground surveillance system did not generate an alert warning of the close proximity of vehicles to the runway.
In addition, the fire truck that collided with the jet lacked a transponder that would have transmitted its location to air traffic control, she said.
The NTSB is leading the investigation into the fatal collision of the CRJ-900 jet operated by Air Canada’s regional partner Jazz Aviation. The crash sent 39 of the 76 passengers and crew to hospital with varying degrees of injuries.
The FAA has encouraged airports to equip fire trucks with transponders because it makes the vehicles’ movements easier to track at busy airports.
U.S. air safety experts have said communications between the plane that was landing, the air traffic controller and the fire truck would be key areas of the investigation.
Air crashes typically are caused by multiple factors.
There were two controllers working in a glass-enclosed section of the airport’s traffic control tower at the time of the crash, just before midnight.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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