By Alexandra Skores, Pete Muntean, CNN
Washington, DC (CNN) — After this week’s deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport, concerns about how much is too much for one air traffic controler to handle have reopened.
Sometimes, controllers in the tower are responsible for planes preparing to take off and can also be tasked with handling those in the air or on the ground.
“It happens in every facility as the traffic winds down, especially at night. You begin to combine positions,” said Harvey Scolnick, a retired air traffic controller, who worked for 42 years for both the military and Federal Aviation Administration. “When the time permits, you combine it to one position — ground control, local control, clearance, delivery — you combine them down to one position. But you try to do it at such a time when the traffic permits.”
On Sunday, just before midnight, Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was landing at LaGuardia Airport when it plowed into a firetruck. Two controllers were working in the tower cab at the time, the top of the tower that looks out over the airfield, the NTSB confirmed on Tuesday.
The “local controller” was in charge of active runways and the immediate airspace surrounding the airport. The “controller in charge” was a supervisor responsible for the safety of operations, and that night, they were also assigned to give pilots departure information. One of them – the NTSB is still trying to determine which one – was also responsible for the aircraft and vehicles on the ground.
The plane had 72 passengers and four crew members on board for the one-hour flight from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia. The two pilots died and dozens of passengers and two firefighters in the emergency vehicle were injured.
While it is far too early to know what caused the crash, National Transportation Safey Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said there’s a systemic issue when positions are combined due to short staffing during the late-night hours.
“Our air traffic control team has stated this is a problem, that this is a concern for them for years,” Homendy told reporters on Tuesday. “I can understand it’s a concern, especially if there’s a heavy workload.”
Combining roles in the tower
Two controllers were working during the midnight shift on Sunday, which may have been standard for LaGuardia at that time of the night. The NTSB will investigate if that procedure was adequate.
CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz says combining air traffic control positions may work during a normal drop in flights late at night, but he believes it “will be determined as a contributing factor to this accident.”
Goelz says traffic at LaGuardia that night surged due to earlier bad weather and delays due to the TSA staffing shortages at airports nationwide, with dozens of late arrivals overwhelming what is typically a reduced workload.
“The reality is you have to staff for the ultimate bad evening,” Goelz said. “You need to be able to pick up a challenge when you’ve had storms, when you’ve had delays.”
Instead, he said, controllers are often left managing too much at once in an already strained system.
“We’re working with an antiquated system and a workforce that is overworked and undermanned,” he said. “That is just a deadly combination.”
As air traffic continues to increase, Goelz warned combining air traffic control positions is “really just playing with fire.”
Yet, Scolnick said if there were any questions about compromising safety, a supervisor would ask a controller to stay later for overtime.
“It seemed to me that it wasn’t a terrible decision to combine positions there, but they did,” Scolnick said. “It was just a freak accident.”
Combining positions is a problem the NTSB has tried to navigate before.
When an Army Black Hawk helicop