The following are excerpts from the NTSB briefing

Firefighting truck 'essentially a tank on wheels'

So, how did the firefighters survive the collision?

Kurtz says aircraft firefighting trucks are different from conventional firetrucks.

"Those trucks are essentially a tank on wheels so you've got to imagine that there is a tremendous amount of structure around them," he said.

Kurtz explained that these vehicles are developed to fight fire from the truck itself instead of from the ground, because aircraft fires often involve fuel spillages that create dynamic and moving situations.

Aircraft firefighting truck likely couldn't 'stop on a dime': expert

Louis Kurtz, the owner of ARFF Specialists, an aircraft firefighter training institution, says it would have been difficult for the two firefighters aboard the truck that collided with the plane to stop after they were told it was safe to cross the runway.

"It's just not a realistic option for a truck to stop on a dime like that. And with the speed of the incoming aircraft, they had less than a second to try to assess [or] manipulate the vehicle out of the way. And at that point it was beyond too late," Kurtz told CBC News Network.

"That truck [carries] about 1,500 gallons of water," he said, noting that vehicles of that size, often exceeding 60,000 pounds, cannot stop quickly even with brakes fully engaged.

Despite the severity of the collision, Kurtz says the outcome could have been much worse had the plane's fuel containers burst, potentially causing a fiery explosion.

"If we would have lost those fuels, this could have created a very, very terrible situation," he said. "In some regards, this is not as bad as it could have been."

'I messed up' and aviation's history of accountability

The air traffic controller's reported admission in the moments after the deadly runway collision at LaGuardia is striking, but not unusual in aviation.

It reflects a culture built on blunt honesty and accountability, where errors are openly acknowledged to prevent future disasters.

That ethos is sometimes traced to the so-called "Asoh Defence," named after Kohei Asoh, the captain of Japan Air Lines Flight 2. After accidentally landing his plane short of the runway in San Francisco Bay in 1968, Asoh famously told investigators: "I f--ked up."

All 107 people on board survived, and his admission became emblematic of an industry approach that prioritizes lessons learned, over blame.

Modern accident investigations rely heavily on this kind of openness. Cockpit voice recorders, air traffic control audio and detailed testimony are used to reconstruct what happened and why.

In the LaGuardia case, investigators are now working to piece together those factors after a controller, working an overnight shift, cleared both a landing aircraft and a vehicle onto the same runway.