‘Could Have Been Much, Much Worse’: CNN Safety Analyst Says Air Canada Flight Was 40 Feet Away From Being Mass Casualty Event

A CNN safety analyst said that 40 feet was all that separated an Air Canada plane from a mass casualty event when it hit a fire truck on the tarmac of New York’s LaGuardia airport early Monday morning.

The two pilots were killed and some 41 people were sent to the hospital following the crash.

The Air Canada flight had just touched down at LaGuardia and was decelerating when it struck the fire truck that was responding to another incident involving a United Airlines flight that twice aborted its takeoff.

CNN also reported that a flight attendant who had been at the front of the plane was found alive and still strapped to her seat Monday morning after being thrown from the plane. CNN did not have word on her condition.

David Soucie, a CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, told Wolf Blitzer that images showed the damage to the front of the plane’s nose was “significant” with “25 to 30 feet of the front part of the aircraft” missing.

“So because that’s gone, you can see that the aircraft goes from a nose down position to a nose up position, just because the weight behind the wheels is more than what’s in front of the wheels now,” Soucie said, continuing:

So, one of the things that really strikes me is that because that aircraft hit directly in the middle of the fire truck, the fire truck was moved forward and the aircraft was damaged in the nose. This could have been much, much worse, Wolf, had that aircraft — had that truck been 40 feet further or 40 feet back, then it would have struck against the wing, the fuel cells, the engines — and would have created a huge fire, and would have had many, many fatalities. So, as tragic as this is for the two that we’ve lost, there could have been much, much worse. And just out of pure luck, that airplane hit in the middle of that fire truck and reduced the number of fatalities significantly.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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