Jack Cabot, who survived the Air Canada plane crash at LaGuardia in New York, described what happened on board the plane and how “people really stepped up.”
The 22-year-old New Yorker was on board the Air Canada jet when it smashed into a Port Authority fire truck late Sunday night. The Bombardier CRJ-900 was arriving from Montreal with 72 passengers and four crew on board when it collided with the fire engine.
Cabot told the New York Post that everything seemed normal on board the plane until the “crazy 12 seconds” when the crash took place.
“It felt like the landing was immediately off,” Cabot said. “There was an incredibly loud bang. It was a really, really hard landing.”
Following the impact, Cabot said he saw “blood everywhere.” He recalled that the passenger seated next to him had injured their face and had blood pouring from their nose.
He said he said saw one young girl traveling alone for the first time, being comforted by an older British woman. Others worked to get everyone off the plane.
“Some people really stepped up in that moment, they organized themselves as a group,” he said. “People were sharing coats. One person used a COVID mask to wipe blood off another person’s face.”
Cabot said he saw people showing their humanity and always making an effort. He added that he considers himself among the fortunate because other passengers were in excruciating pain.
Passenger on board the Air Canada plane that crashed described what happened
“It was a regular flight, and everybody braces for impact, and there is always a little bit of sense of nervousness as any plane comes in for landing, but pretty quickly as we touched ground, it all felt very wrong,” Cabot told Fox News. “Though the brakes were being hit in a way that was very hard and all of a sudden we started to think there might be something wrong. A very loud bang. And we all pretty much just didn’t know whether we were going to make it. It was — it was like being in a gigantic car crash at 200 miles per hour.
In newly-released air traffic control audio a controller admits he ‘messed up’
The audio from air traffic control reveals a controller giving the all-clear to cross, followed by a controller yelling, “Stop, stop, stop, stop, truck 1, stop, stop, stop.”
The audio then records the controller saying, “Stop, truck 1, stop!” once more.
Subsequently, two unidentified air traffic controllers are heard talking about the incident. One says, “I got the word that we’re gonna be closed for a little while,” then the other remarks, “That wasn’t good to watch.”
“Yeah, I know,” responds the first air traffic controller. “I was there. I was trying to reach out to ’em to stop. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.”
“Nah, man, you did the best you could,” his coworker tried to reassure him.