After Jet Fatally Hit Fire Truck, Big Change at NYC Airports

New York's three major airports have added a safety fix that federal regulators pushed for years before a deadly collision at LaGuardia in the spring. The Port Authority, which manages those air hubs, has now equipped all of its rescue and firefighting vehicles with tracking transponders that show each vehicle's identity and location on air-traffic controllers' radar screens, a change prompted by the March crash involving a fire truck and an Air Canada Express jet that killed two pilots, per the New York Times. Investigators had pointed to the fire truck's lack of a transponder as a key factor in the accident, saying the tower's warning system failed to match the plane's path with that of "Truck 1."

The tracking devices are now active at LaGuardia, JFK, Newark Liberty, and Teterboro airports, with about 200 vehicles at each major hub expected to be equipped by late 2028. The Federal Aviation Administration is now reupping its advice to other airports to do the same, which it was urging even before the March accident. Meanwhile, two air-traffic controllers are in hot water after a probe found they'd left their job posts an hour early right before that crash. AeroXplorer has more on the tracking technology, as well as on how "complex" ground operations are at New York's big airports, which WABC notes see about 140 million travelers pass through annually.