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Pilot and Co-Pilot Killed, Dozens Hurt in Runway Collision at LaGuardia; Trump Admin Sending ICE Agents to Airports Amid TSA Shortages; Ninth Seed Iowa Stuns #1 Florida in Thriller, 73-72. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 23, 2026 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, 2 dead, more than 40 heard after a passenger jet slams into a fire truck while landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Federal investigators now on the scene, the airport closed.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: and the flying public also dealing with extremely long lines. At some airports this morning, ICE agents arrive to staff some airports severely impacted by lack of TSA amid the ongoing partial government shutdown.

And deadline day for the president's new red line with Iran. He's ordering them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by tonight, or he will, quote, obliterate their power plants.

John Berman and Kate Bolduan off today, I'm Sara Sidner with Erica Hill. This is CNN New Central?

Breaking overnight, a deadly collision at LaGuardia Airport in New York. The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada passenger plane were killed when the aircraft slammed into a fire truck on the runway. Dozens of people were injured.

It happened just before midnight as a plane was landing at LaGuardia from Montreal. It was going at about 130 miles an hour. Air traffic control audio captured the moments right before the collision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Frontier 4195 to stop there please. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Truck One, stop, stop, stop.

Stop, Truck One, stop. Stop, Truck One, stop.

JAZZ 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can't move. Vechicles are responding to you now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: 72 passengers and four crew were on that flight. 41 people were taken to the hospital. Two people inside the fire truck that was hit were also hospitalized. This morning, the NTSB is, of course, investigating in LaGuardia Airport will remain closed until at least 2:00 in the afternoon. And officials say that could be pushed later as the investigation proceeds.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is at LaGuardia Airport for us. You have been there throughout the night, Shimon. What are you learning this morning?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's just what you can imagine must be such a horrific moment for air traffic controllers when something that seems so routine, where you're allowing a fire truck, a crash truck that's responding to an emergency to clear the area, seemingly, it appears to be safe and then tragedy struck.

This morning, Sara, we're getting our first look here as the daylight comes of what's happening here at the airport. I'm going to step out of the camera, so Steve here could kind of show you around. That's the plane there, as you've been showing folks, and you could see the front the nose of the plane is completely gone, obliterated, just showing you the impact of this crash. And as you said, according to flight data, that the plane was going about 130 miles an hour, the last time the data was collected.

And then when you look over to the left, you see the crash truck. It's yellow. It's on its side. And just, again, the sheer force of this crash knocking that truck over the plane's nose completely gone, and really just the sheer force of this and those two pilots that were in there, and, sadly, they did not survive.

Now, we spoke to a passenger this morning who described what it was like on the plane in the moments before it landed. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK CABOT, PASSENGER ON AIR CANADA FLIGHT: We went down for a regular landing and we came in pretty hard. We immediately hit something and it was just chaos from there. About five seconds later, we had come to a stop. But in that short period, I mean, everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming pretty quickly. We didn't have any directions because the pilot's cabin had been kind of destroyed. So, somebody said, let's get the emergency exit and get the door, and let's all jump out, and that's exactly what we did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: So, a couple of things to note. Obviously, the passenger there describing this landing and that the pilots braked.

[07:05:01]

So, clearly, they saw this truck and they were trying to brake and trying to slow down the plane as much as possible.

The other thing important to note, the Port Authority, the director here of the Port Authority came out and gave a brief update this morning, said that this collision, this crash happens as the plane is landing. So, this is not something that, where the plane is taxiing heading towards a gate, but this happened very significant, as the plane was landing, nine people, according to the official here, remain in the hospital. And we're waiting on word on those pilots, the families and their identities.

The NTSB is here now. They are investigating, and we should hear from them here later this morning, or perhaps this afternoon.

SIDNER: Thank you for that update, Shimon, nine people you say you've just learned still in the hospital. Two pilots have been killed and the plane was actually trying to land when this happened. I really appreciate the update. Erica?

HILL: CNN Transportation Analyst Mary Schiavo joins me now. She's the former inspector general at the Department of Transportation. Mary, when we look at what we know here, including the audio that we have from air traffic control, what do you make of this collision and the way this tragedy happens?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, there's one thing that's always clear, and that is once an aircraft is cleared to land, which this one was, it owns that runway. So, there's a lot of communications that go on. There's the tower or the local controller, as they call it, and they can control the clearances for the runway and the approach, et cetera.

But then there's also ground control, which coordinates the movement on the ground of the aircraft of vehicles, et cetera. But the important thing is those are all supposed to be coordinated, and they're supposed to be coordinated, of course, with air traffic control.

So, there'll be a lot of questions here about, once again, what was the FAA doing? Who was in the tower? Who was on the job? Had they been working long hours? Did they have enough people to coordinate all these functions? But without a doubt, when you're flying a plane and you're cleared to land and you have that runway, you own it. You don't have to stop for a fire truck. And you can't. It's impossible.

HILL: And you can't, right? It's much harder for the plane to stop than the truck. But as you're laying that out for us, the way everything that should be coordinated, we know that the truck was given clearance, and then we hear in that audio the controllers are trying to tell the truck to stop. But knowing that this plane was coming in, does it surprise you at all that that truck would've been given clearance to make its way on the tarmac to the other plane that was requesting assistance knowing that this Air Canada flight was preparing to land?

SCHIAVO: Yes. And we don't have any indication yet, we don't have any evidence yet that they was told about, you know, wait for the landing aircraft or hold short before you cross the runway, there's an aircraft coming in. And maybe perhaps they thought that the fire truck would go behind the landing aircraft after it touched down. And, you know, you also have to wonder how do they not see the aircraft. Well, you know, at night, and especially when you're flying, I mean, the airport is just ablaze of many different kinds of lights, and sometimes it's very hard to distinguish among the lights. So, if the fire truck had been cleared, as it appears it was to cross the runway, one, it might not even been looking for landing traffic because it wouldn't have expected it, and, two, there are just a lot of lights at the airport. You know, in some ways it's a beautiful site when you're coming into land, but it's confusing.

And so the communications and who was told what, when, but in no case is anyone allowed clearance when a plane has been cleared on that runway and it's coming in on final, it's called final approach, and touching down. And that's it. It owns that runway.

HILL: All right. Mary, we're going to continue to follow this. I appreciate your expertise, as always. Thank you. Sara?

Oh, the lines for security at some TSA checkpoints growing longer and longer today. This morning, ICE agents now on hand, including at the nation's busiest airport. But what's their actual role? That's ahead.

Plus, gas prices continuing to surge now, closer to an average of nearly $4 a gallon. Although, let's be honest, you might be paying a heck of a lot more depending on where you live. President Trump now threatening to hit Iran's energy sites if they don't reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That deadline today and Iran pushing back with its own threat.

Plus, video shows explosions in flames outside of a Jewish center in London, a number of ambulances on fire in a suspected anti-Semitic attack. We are live on the scene.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:10:00]

HILL: Breaking this morning, new images just into CNN of ICE agents at the airport in Atlanta. So, this is more than -- one of more than a dozen airports across the nation where the Trump administration is expected to deploy ICE beginning today. So, according to the administration, those agents will be there to help with the massive wait times amid staffing concerns for the TSA as those critical workers are struggling to keep up and, of course, are not being paid because of the partial government shutdown.

Here's the question, though. It's still not clear for a lot of people how exactly these ICE agents are going to be used. President Trump's Border Czar Tom Homan, we know, is overseeing the effort. But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he and Duffy are actually offering mixed messages on the mission here and, again, how the agents will be used.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: We're simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don't need their specialized expertise, such as, you know, screening through the X-ray machine, not training that, we won't do that.

SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: They run those same type of security machines at the southern border, right?

[07:15:00]

Packages come through or people come through, they run similar assets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: More than 400 TSA officers have quit since the partial shutdown began on February 14th. DHS says more than 11 percent of TSA workers called out on Saturday. That's the highest number since the partial government shutdown began last month.

CNN's Ryan Young is at his new home, Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson International Airport. Ryan, what are you seeing this morning? So, we know ICE agents are on hand. Do you see them in an active role this morning?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is the part that we have to figure out here. They are on the other side and we've seen them moving through a couple different times. But, honestly, the story here is the line because so many people are standing here. This is the TSA pre-check line. We've dealt with this before. This line stretches all the way down here.

But here's the new wrinkle. Step outside with me real quick. You kind of have to see this one to believe it. This is actually still the TSA pre-check line. This line now wraps outside. So, if you think about it, it wraps around the inside four different times, then comes outside and wraps around two other times to get all these passengers through.

I was actually here yesterday trying to get family members through the airport. I've had friends who traveled through here. The wait yesterday was over four hours long. We were showing people times because, of course, they have the big computer screen to show what your estimated wait time is. Those computers have been taken offline at this point.

No one has an expectation for how long they're going to be standing in a line. And I want to stress, this is the pre-check line on the other side, on the north side that line's even longer. It is outside the building. Everyone's trying to figure out exactly what to do. And on top of that, if you have a check bag, it can take an hour to check in your check bag.

So, this now wraps, hold on, back around and through the building again before you even start the normal line to get back this way. So, to say I've never seen this before would be an understatement. People are angry, they're upset, they're trying to figure out for airport officials what this means once they get on the inside. We have people who are showing up at 1:00 for 6:00 flights. They're all trying to sort of sort this out.

And, again, in terms of the information, we are at a different level now in terms of what happens next. Well, I'm going to show you, this is normally where you would walk in here and you would make this immediate right to go toward pre-check. But all gates, all sections of the airport are now really amazed. And so that's what we're dealing with. We're going to continue to follow it, and we're going to find those ICE agents who are throughout this building and show you them as the hour goes on.

HILL: Yes. It's sort of crazy that it just gets more and more unbelievable by the day, Ryan, but there it does, wow, all the way outside.

All right, we know you'll keep us posted as you learn more, we'll continue to follow those developments as well.

Meantime, we are also keeping a close watch on your wallet. $4 a gallon gas, is it just inevitable at this point? As prices continue to climb, experts are warning that the current pain you see, that's likely just the beginning.

And how about a little March Madness upset, the defending champs, Florida, sorry, Sara Sidner, they're out thanks to a clutch three- pointer from Iowa, go Hawkeyes, in the final seconds. Ooh, there's a lot to unpack there. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

SIDNER: I just want to bring you a quick update as to what is happening at LaGuardia Airport in New York as the sun is rising. We're now getting a closer look at the crash between a passenger plane and fire truck. The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada flight were killed in this. Dozens of people were injured. At last count, nine people, according to our Shimon Prokuepcz, are still in the hospital.

It happened just before midnight as the plane was landing at LaGuardia from Montreal. It was going about 130 miles an hour. It tried to slow down when it saw what was going on there on the runway this morning. The NTSB is investigating.

LaGuardia Airport remains closed now. That is an airport that has about 900 flights going in and out of it every single day. It is closed till at least 2:00 P.M. Eastern.

Now to sports, the field of 64 down to 16, and let's just say your bracket probably didn't see this coming. Mine certainly didn't. Actually, no one's bracket did because after the weekend, there are zero, clock it, perfect brackets remaining.

CNN's Coy Wire joining us now with the latest on all this madness. You know, I'm heartbroken. Why you had to start with Florida when they didn't win? Why'd you do that? Why did you do that? COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Too soon, Sara? I have a little handkerchief here for you and all the Gators fans out there and your tears --

SIDNER: It's not orange and blue. I don't want it.

WIRE: I'm sorry, Sara.

Listen, the Iowa Hawkeyes, they're partying like it's 1999, upsetting the defending champs in a scrappy physical game as the nine seed facing the number one seed Florida Gators that came down to this. Gators up two with just four seconds ago, and Alvaro Folgueiras steps back to hit the game-winning three.

He pointed up to honor his dad who passed away when he was just nine years old, a 73-72 win. He ran over to hug mom, who'd only ever seen him play three times in his career. Coach Ben McCollum was coaching D2 two years ago, but in his first season with the Hawkeyes takes him to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999. They'll face Nebraska who's in it for the first time ever.

St. John's also partying like it's 1999, down to Kansas with just seconds to go, but Dylan Darling calls game, a thrilling upset.

[07:25:05]

His teammates, mosh pit him. Darling is the first player in tournament history to score a game-winning buzzer beater with his first basket of the game. They play Duke on Friday. Coach Rick Pitino takes St. John's in their first Sweet 16 in nearly 30 years. Listen to how he came to call Darling's AKA Bells number on the final play,

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK PITINO, ST. JOHN'S HEAD COACH: And Bells comes up to me. And says, run power, which is a high back screen, pick and roll. So, I walked away. I said, okay, power. I walked away and said, wait a second. He hasn't scored a bucket and he wants to run a play for himself. And I'm thinking as I'm walking, I said, but he's Bells. And not only did he do it, he went with his right hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: All right. We had a dramatic finish in Women's March Madness as well. Ole Miss tied it with Minnesota with three seconds to go, but Minnesota's Amaya Battle would end up stepping and hitting the game winner, 65-63. She's a local kid who played at Minnesota her entire career and her final shot in their home arena sends her Gophers to their first Sweet 16 in 21 years.

Sara, I know your bracket is busted, you're way down at 32nd thousandth place in our CNN bracket, but how about Erica Hill, 228 out of more than 51,000 people. I hear cheer. You go, girl. Yes.

HILL: Shut the front door. Wait, what number is that?

WIRE: Yes.

SIDNER: Should you two learn a bit (ph)?

WIRE: 228 out of like more than 52,000. You are crushing it. I don't know how you're doing it.

HILL: I'd love to thank my son Weston, who helped me pick the brackets. He's probably sleeping because he's in college. Thank you.

WIRE: Good job, Weston. Yes.

HILL: Also St. John's, way to go with the buzzer beater. That helped me.

SIDNER: Yes, that did help you.

HILL: Sorry. Sorry about your Gators.

SIDNER: It's rough, but thank you. See, at least somebody's winning around here. Good grief.

Coy Wire, it's a pleasure. I will take that hanky though. I will take it.

WIRE: You got it girl. I got it for you.

SIDNER: All right. Ahead, we're following our breaking news. There are two people that have died after a plane hit a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport. New details on the crash and how long the airport is going to stay closed today affecting flights in and out of LaGuardia.

And we're seeing reports of hundreds of rescues across Oahu as catastrophic flooding hits the Hawaiian Islands, more on the worst flooding Hawaii has seen in 20 years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]