The federal officials charged with investigating the fatal crash at LaGuardia Airport have had their vital work delayed by the partial government shutdown.
Members of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent body with oversight authority over FAA investigations, began arriving in New York on Monday after Sunday evening’s tragic accident.
The collision between a Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada and a Port Authority Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting vehicle at LaGuardia Airport killed two pilots and left dozens injured.
Key investigators have struggled to reach the crash scene, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a Monday press conference, citing the shutdown for impacting their work.
“We have one of our air traffic control specialists who was in line with TSA for three hours until we called in Houston to beg to see if we can get her through, so we can get her here,” Homendy said.
“So it’s been a really, really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they’re still arriving as I speak,” she added.
“We have LaGuardia that was shut down. We had a ground stop at Newark today and then we have DHS that shutdown,” she added, noting it was “a long travel day.”
Homendy said she and other NTSB staffers drove from Washington, D.C. to New York, while others were arriving by train. At least 25 specialists are expected to investigate the accident scene.
TSA delays have caused commuter chaos at airports across the country. Staff have not been paid since February’s shutdown. ICE agents have been deployed at airports to provide additional security and shorten TSA screening queues.
The NTSB has already conducted a walking inspection of the scene.
“There is a tremendous, tremendous amount of debris” that poses an injury risk, Homendy said, calling the scene “pretty expansive.”
As well as avoiding hazardous material on site, the NTSB accessed the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder by cutting a hole in the roof of the airport.
Both recorders were taken to their labs in Washington, D.C. Homendy said her team has “been able to at least verify that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged.”
Investigators are also sourcing surveillance video from the airport.
Homendy said they have “a lot of data” and “preliminary information” but would not release it before their investigations were concluded.
“The NTSB deals in facts,” she said. “We don’t speculate. We don’t take one person at their word. We verify that information carefully before we provide it.”
Sunday evening’s crash at LaGuardia is the second fatal aircraft crash in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who headed to LaGuardia on Monday, has been accused of not doing enough to boost air traffic control staffing levels.
During Monday’s press briefing, Duffy said he had requested “additional money” from Congress for air traffic control.
“We’ve been modernizing our system, but we can’t fully modernize it until the Congress gives us the additional money,” he stated
“It’s not a partisan issue, both Democrats and Republicans agree, but they have to have the will to finish the funding,” he said.
Duffy added, “I’m not saying the crash would have been prevented if we had all the equipment deployed, but it’s important if we care about air travel safety, we care about having a brand new air traffic control system, the best in the world, with the best equipment virtually all of it developed here in America.”
He posted on social media he was “praying for the victims and all those impacted by the tragic crash” and said NTSB would will “find answers as to what went wrong.”
