BBC
Air Canada flight AC8646's collision late Sunday with a fire truck on a LaGuardia Airport runway killed the plane's two pilots, injured dozens of others, and left passengers and witnesses stunned and stranded.
"We were literally like 100 metres away," said 23-year-old Leo Medina, who was onboard another plane on the tarmac when the crash happened. "It was like the plane got cut in half."
He told the BBC his plane then returned to the gate and that he had been waiting in the New York airport for more than 12 hours, sleeping on the floor on a bed of jackets.
In addition to killing the two pilots, the incident, which happened at 23:40 local time on Sunday (03:40 GMT on Monday), injured 41 people who were taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, and shut LaGuardia until Monday afternoon.
After visiting the crash site, US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said he was reminded of the importance of wearing seat belts - on an aircraft or in any other mode of transportation.
"As you see from last night, they do save lives," Duffy said during a news conference.
Québec native Antoine Forest, 30, was identified as one of the Air Canada pilots who died in the collision, according to Canadian media reports. The other pilot has not yet been named.
"These were two young men at the start of their career, so it's an absolute tragedy," Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator Bran Bedford said.
Passenger Rebecca Liquori, who was on the plane arriving from Montreal when it hit the truck, told News12 Long Island there was a loud "boom" just after it landed.
"As we were descending, we hit a lot of turbulence," she said. "Then we landed very roughly… Everyone felt it. It was like the plane jolted and you heard the pilot try to brake trying to prevent the collision."
"As you heard the brake, a couple seconds later it was just a very loud boom," she added. "Everybody jolted out of their seats."
Liquori described passengers helping each other slide down a wing to get out.
"I'm just happy to be alive," she said. "I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I've done countless times … ending like this."
In audio from the air traffic control tower at LaGuardia, a staff member can be heard saying: "'Truck One, stop, stop, stop!" in the seconds before the crash.
The fire truck had been called out minutes earlier to another plane that "reported an issue with odour", according to Port Authority executive director Kathryn Garcia.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani described it as a "tragic collision" and said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - an independent federal agency - was investigating.
"I am grateful to our first responders, whose swift actions saved lives," he said.
NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy confirmed on Monday that it had begun an investigation, with its team arriving at the site at just after 03:00 local time.
While emphasising the NTSB probe is still in its preliminary stages, she said the team completed a walking inspection.
Homendy also said they were analysing the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which were not damaged in the crash.
There is "a tremendous amount of debris" in the area that they have to document, collect and process as evidence, and the runway will remain closed for the investigation, she said.
Jack Cabot, a passenger on the plane that hit the truck, described a chaotic scene.
"We went down for a regular landing," he told CNN. "We immediately hit something and it was just chaos from there … Everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming."
CBS News reported that a flight attendant was found alive strapped into her seat after falling through a hole in the aircraft's floor during the crash. She's said to have serious but non-life threatening injuries.
Katie Rojas, 26, whose flight to Chicago was on the runway ready to depart when the crash happened, said: "It's scary. You never know if it could have been one of us."
Many of the 40 taken to hospital have been released. Two people in the fire engine, which collided with the plane, were in hospital.
At the news conference, Mayor Mamdani commended "those who were thrust into a frightening accident and reacted not only with composure, but by extending a hand to the person next to them".
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney called the crash "deeply saddening" and US President Donald Trump said it was "terrible" and "a dangerous business".
The crash caused travel chaos at LaGuardia - one of the busiest airports in the US - leaving hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled.
It has been more than 34 years since LaGuardia had an incident with a death at the airport, officials said on Monday.
The crash comes during a tumultuous time in air travel. For weeks, US airports have faced Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffing shortages due to the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA, ICE and other agencies.
That has left airport security staff without pay for over a month, led to a spike in TSA agents calling out of work, and caused hours-long waits at security checkpoints.
Homendy said her team of investigators had not been spared those delays.
"We have one air traffic control specialist 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 during her news conference in New York.
"So it's been a really, really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they're still arriving as I speak."
One TSA agent at LaGuardia told the BBC that "it's unfortunate" she still must work without pay.
Some of her colleagues have called out sick amid the ongoing shutdown, she said, and while it varies from agent to agent, "for the most part people are trying to show up to work".
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