Investigator Sent to Deadly LaGuardia Crash Was Stuck in TSA Line for Three Hours — NTSB Had to ‘Beg’ to Let Her Through

The long TSA security lines at the airports are not just a hassle for travelers, they held up an investigator going to the scene of a deadly runway crash for hours until the National Transportation and Safety Board intervened.

An Air Canada plane collided with a Port Authority fire truck that was crossing the runway shortly after the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York late Sunday evening. The fire truck was responding to a call from a United flight that reported an odor in the cabin. Both of the Air Canada pilots were killed and dozens were sent to the hospital. LaGuardia remains shut down in the wake of the crash and is expected to remain closed through Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier Monday, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy held a press conference regarding the progress of the investigation.

According to Homendy, the team of investigators “began to arrive around 3:10 am,” but some were “still en route” at the time of her press conference, meaning they had not yet had “a full day of investigation” yet. She acknowledged that there were “a lot of questions,” and said she wanted to “set expectations,” especially in light of the DHS shutdown.

“We have DHS that is shut down, and we have long TSA lines,” she said. “Our 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. So it’s been a really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they’re still arriving as we speak.”

CNN aviation and transportation correspondent Pete Muntean reported on the latest developments in the story on Monday’s episode of AC360, telling Anderson Cooper that the incident was “kind of symptomatic of an aviation system that’s really bursting at the seams.”

While the issues with funding TSA workers’ paychecks were “not necessarily connected” directly to the crash, it was still “having an impact on aviation as a whole,” by causing “plenty of people” to miss their flights, and now “it’s impacted the NTSB work here.”

“They can’t even get their people here,” said Cooper.

Muntean expressed shock at Homendy saying they had to “beg” to get their “key investigator,” an air traffic control specialist, through the security lines “after she was waiting there for three hours.”

He also pointed out new reporting on Monday that there were “anonymous reports by pilots, essentially sounding the warning call, saying that they felt like LaGuardia was so crowded, so at capacity, they thought it could be the next DCA,” referencing a crash that occurred at Reagan National Airport in January 2025 between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, killing all occupants on both aircraft.

“There’s some really, really key telltales here,” Muntean concluded. “And I have to tell you, I’ve been covering near collisions for years here at CNN. And it was very interesting that we were reporting on collisions that did not happen. Now we’re reporting on collisions that are happening. It’s a very bad dream.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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