An Air Canada Express regional jet arriving from Montreal struck a Port Authority vehicle after landing at LaGuardia Airport late Sunday, forcing a ground stop, bringing emergency crews onto the runway and opening an investigation into a collision that badly damaged the plane’s front end.
The crash disrupted one of the New York region’s busiest airports just before midnight and left several key facts unsettled into early Monday. Police and fire officials confirmed the collision, but they did not immediately release a full account of who was hurt, how the vehicle entered the plane’s path or when normal flight operations would fully resume. The Federal Aviation Administration placed LaGuardia under a ground stop and airport status systems showed that arriving flights were being diverted or sent back as crews responded on the field and officials began piecing together what happened.
Authorities said the collision happened at about 11:38 p.m. on Sunday, March 22, after the Air Canada flight had landed at LaGuardia. The New York Police Department confirmed that a plane had collided with a Port Authority vehicle. A spokesperson for the New York City Fire Department said firefighters responded to a report of a plane that had crashed into a vehicle on the runway at that time, adding that “additional information was not immediately available.” Reuters and other outlets, citing flight-tracking data, identified the aircraft as an Air Canada Express CRJ-900 operated by Jazz Aviation, Air Canada’s regional partner, on a flight from Montreal. Flight-tracking information indicated the aircraft was moving at a relatively low speed after landing when the impact occurred. By early Monday, images from the airport showed the jet still on the runway with heavy damage to its nose and the front of the aircraft pitched upward.
The official record in the first hours after the crash was thin, and that uncertainty became part of the story. The FAA’s public status system showed that LaGuardia had closed after what the agency described in notices as an “emergency.” Another FAA notice indicated the halt could last well beyond the initial stop, though that timeline can change as airport crews inspect pavement, remove disabled equipment and determine whether runways are safe to reopen. Authorities did not immediately say how many passengers and crew members were aboard the plane, whether the vehicle was being driven across the runway or standing on it, or whether any evacuation took place. Reports circulating in the first hours identified the vehicle as an airport rescue or firefighting truck and said rescue personnel may have been hurt, but officials had not publicly laid out those details in a full briefing by early Monday. That left the public with dramatic images, a shutdown airport and only fragments of confirmed information.
The collision also landed in the middle of a difficult weather and travel period for New York airports. Reports through the evening described rain, low clouds and wider disruptions before the crash, conditions that can already slow traffic at LaGuardia, where tightly scheduled arrivals and departures leave little room for error. The incident did not happen in the air, and there was no immediate indication of a landing failure. Instead, the early reporting pointed to an airside ground collision, a category of accident that can involve aircraft, maintenance trucks, rescue equipment and other authorized vehicles moving in controlled areas. In this case, the damage was concentrated at the front of the plane, suggesting a sharp impact after touchdown rather than a runway overrun. The aircraft itself was a regional jet used on short-haul service between Montreal and New York, the kind of flight that typically turns quickly and serves business and connecting travelers. That made the closure especially disruptive because it came late at night, when there are fewer spare aircraft, fewer available crews and fewer easy options for rebooking diverted passengers.
By early Monday, the procedural path ahead was beginning to come into focus even as the cause remained unclear. The FAA had already acknowledged the emergency through its air traffic notices, but neither the agency nor the Port Authority had publicly said which body would lead the longer investigation, what evidence had already been collected or when a preliminary statement might be issued. In cases involving serious runway incidents, investigators typically examine radio traffic, vehicle routing, airfield movement logs, weather conditions, line-of-sight issues and the sequence of instructions given to both the cockpit and the ground crew. None of that had been released publicly in this case. Officials also had not said whether the damaged aircraft would be towed from the runway before dawn or whether portions of the field could reopen while the investigation continued nearby. Air Canada had not yet publicly explained how it would handle the interrupted flight, and the Port Authority had not announced a detailed overnight operations plan beyond the airport closure reflected in federal notices.
The clearest picture available in the first hours came from the scene itself. Videos posted online by bystanders showed the aircraft with its nose torn up and its front end raised, while emergency vehicles gathered around it on the airfield. A still image distributed by The Associated Press later showed the jet resting on the runway in the dark, surrounded by response lights. The damage looked severe enough to fuel instant speculation about major injuries, but officials did not match that online chatter with confirmed numbers. That gap between what people could see and what authorities were prepared to say shaped the first wave of coverage. There was a visible wrecked plane, an airport shut to traffic and a clear public-safety response, but there was also a great deal investigators had not yet confirmed. For passengers waiting in terminals, families watching from home and airlines trying to reroute aircraft overnight, the most immediate fact was simple: a routine arrival from Canada had turned into a runway emergency at one of the country’s most heavily used urban airports.
As of early Monday, March 23, officials had confirmed the collision, the airport closure and the emergency response, but not a full injury count, a formal cause or a timetable for complete recovery. The next milestone is expected to be a fuller statement from aviation or airport officials once crews clear the scene and investigators establish the basic sequence of events.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.