Pilots Had Been Concerned About LaGuardia Airport Safety for Months Before Fatal Runway Collision

Pilots had been expressing their concern about recent air traffic control issues at New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) ahead of the fatal runway collision.

In an article published on Tuesday, March 24, CNN revealed it reviewed two years of government records of a voluntary reporting system that employees can use to flag safety concerns and found that the aerospace industry has been sounding the alarm for a while about LGA’s air traffic control being plagued by near-misses, miscommunication and dangerous conditions.

“Please do something,” a pilot wrote, according to the outlet.

“The pace of operations is building in LGA (LaGuardia). The controllers are pushing the line,” the pilot said. “On thunderstorm days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident there.” The pilot was referring to the January 2025 mid-air collision over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, that left 60 people dead.

It’s worth noting that the system CNN reviewed often takes months to record the most up-to-date complaints. It’s likely the safety concerns raised that CNN reviewed came in before recent troubles, like the tragic crash on Sunday, March 22, where an Air Canada plane collided with a firetruck in a high-speed runway collision that killed two pilots and dozens of passengers.

The outlet reports that only a few months ago, two Delta Airlines planes collided while taxiing on the runway, sending one person to the hospital. In December of 2024, it found two planes almost collided again in a dangerous near-miss incident all thanks to bad information coming to the pilots from the control tower.

Overall, CNN discovered a slew of near-misses and genuine safety concerns that have likely only been exacerbated as a lack of funding for the TSA has caused chronic understaffing.