National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy reminded reporters Tuesday that multiple things usually go wrong in order for an incident to occur, like the collision at LaGuardia and urged the public not to automatically blame air traffic controllers.

An Air Canada Express jet and a firetruck collided late Sunday night at New York's LaGuardia Airport, resulting in the deaths of both airplane pilots. Dozens of the flight's 72 passengers and four crew members were injured in the collision.

The plane's pilots have been identified as Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, according to NBC News. 

Homendy confirmed that two people were in the air traffic control tower at the time of the crash, which is standard for the midnight shift, and that the truck that the plane collided with did not have a transponder. She also stated surface detection equipment at LaGuardia did not generate an alert due to the close proximity of vehicles that were merging and unmerging.

“I would caution against pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved,” Homendy told reporters. “This is a heavy workload environment ... When something goes wrong, that means many, many things went wrong."

The fire truck was reportedly in the runway area responding to an incident on another flight and had been given clearance from air traffic control to cross that runway.

Homendy admitted that the investigation is still underway and that the NTSB has not interviewed key witnesses in the crash, including the controllers who were in the tower at the time and the officers in the fire truck involved in the collision.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.