Investigators in the U.S. and Canada have cautioned that it is too early to determine a cause and that several safeguards would have had to fail for a disaster of this magnitude to occur.
In aviation safety, this is known as the Swiss Cheese Model, which compares the holes in stacked slices of cheese to weaknesses in different layers of safety defences. The holes rarely all line up. But when they do, an error can pass through.
One of the errors now drawing concern from Canadian aviation safety experts is runway incursions, like the one leading up to the collision at LaGuardia.
In 2010, the year the TSB added runway incursions to its watchlist, Nav Canada recorded 334 of them. In its 2025 financial year, Nav Canada recorded 612 runway incursions at Canadian airports between Sept. 1 and Aug. 31, according to data provided to CBC News.
But will the transponder be able to tell the difference between a vehicle being on a runway and one just holding short of it, waiting? Will it be able to tell in advance that the vehicle will start moving onto the runway after the plane has already committed to its trajectory on the runway and can’t change it anymore like it seems to have happened there?
Yes, ADS-B on planes can already tell a plane is holding on the taxiway. You can see this on flight tracking software which uses that data.
Every transponder is broadcasting position and velocity and broadcasting it in the clear, so other vehicles know the position of the transmitting one peer-to-peer.
It won’t necessarily stop a vehicle from crossing a runway, but it will sound an alarm if there’s a runway incursion and will give ATC better situational awareness and will show ground vehicles to pilots in the cockpit.