Following the fatal collision between an Air Canada Express passenger plane and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in the late hours of March 22, the family of Antoine Forest identified him as one of the two pilots killed aboard the flight.
The Bombardier CRJ-900 plane departed from Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport (YUL) and had been given clearance to land at LaGuardia’s Runway 4. The air traffic controller, who was operating alone navigating both air and ground traffic for hours before the flight, also gave the fire truck permission to cross the same runway at approximately 11:37 p.m.
Air traffic controller footage captured him desperately yelling at the truck to stop immediately after the collision.
Photos that emerged from the scene show the nose of the plane and part of the fuselage completely mangled as the 41 passengers and other crew aboard the flight were evacuated with injuries of varying degrees of severity.
Antoine Forest remembered as ‘always flying’
A native of Coteau-du-Lac southwest of Montreal, Forest had been working as a first officer for Air Canada’s Jazz Aviation regional partner since 2022.
Great aunt Jeannette Gagnier described him as a lifelong flying passionate who started learning to fly a small plane in rural Québec at the age of 16. At around that age, he moved closer to a larger city to improve his knowledge of English and raise his chances of becoming a pilot for a major North American airline. Forest began his career flying single-engine jets for regional airline Air Saguenay before progressing to larger planes for several carriers.
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“He was always taking courses and flying,” Gagnier, who Forest and his brother considered a grandmother, described to the Toronto Sun. “He never stopped. He flew his first plane when he was 16 years old.”
A joint probe into the cause of the crash from both U.S. and Canadian investigators is currently ongoing but in a press briefing in the morning of March 23 Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said that anyone driving through the runway area “always is in deference to the control tower.”
In the recording from the tower, the air traffic controller is heard saying “we were dealing with an emergency earlier; I messed up.”
“A very bad day for me”: Memories and condolences pour in
“It’s a very bad day for me,” Gagnier said in an interview from her home. The name of the captain killed has not yet been released by aviation authorities.
Another colleague who worked with Forest at Exact Air prior to him moving over to Jazz Aviation said that he was “a pleasure” to work with while yet another described him as “a hard worker, very resourceful” who was always “ready to fix and fly his plane.”
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Air Canada President Michael Rousseau also called the collision “a very somber day at Air Canada” as tributes for the killed pilots from colleagues, fellow union members and the flying public continued to pour in throughout the day.
Jazz Aviation President Doug Clarke also called March 22 “an incredibly difficult day for our airline, our employees, and most importantly, the families and loved ones of those affected by the accident involving flight 8646.”
Related: LaGuardia Airport reopens one runway after fatal crash
