Probe to investigate if LaGuardia air traffic controller stepped away before deadly collision

Source: New York Post

Investigators are probing whether an air traffic controller briefly stepped away to answer an emergency phone call just before the deadly collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport last month. The late-night crash — which killed both pilots aboard an Air Canada flight on March 22 — is under intense scrutiny, with sources telling The New York Times that one line of inquiry is whether a controller left their post to use a “crash phone,” a dedicated emergency line inside the tower. The National Transportation Safety Board is piecing together what happened in the final moments before the jet slammed into a fire truck just before midnight, marking the airport’s first fatal accident in more than 30 years.