A key investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) who was part of a ‘Go Team’ responding to the crash of an Air Canada Express regional jet at LaGuardia Airport nearly didn’t make it to New York on Sunday after she got trapped in an hours-long TSA line at Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
The revelation was made by NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy during a press conference on Sunday afternoon at LaGuardia, in which she urged the public and media to have patience because investigators had been delayed in getting to the crash site.
While some investigators arrived at LaGuardia in the early hours of Sunday morning, Hommendy and some senior investigators didn’t even bother trying to fly to New York and instead drove nearly five hours from the NTSB’s headquarters in Washington DC.
“I know many of you have questions, but I just want to set expectations,” Hommendy said during the media briefing. “We have LaGuardia that was shut down, we had a ground stop at Newark today, and then we have DHS that’s shut down, and we have long TSA lines.”
“Our air traffic control specialist, who was in line with TSA for three hours in Houston, until we called to beg to see if we could get her through and see if we could get her here,” Hommendy explained.
“It’s been a really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they’re still arriving.” The entire NTSB investigation team was not expected to arrive in New York until around 1 am on March 24.
Houston Airport (IAH) is one of 14 airports across the United States where the Trump administration has deployed armed ICE agents in an attempt to alleviate massive TSA lines caused by unpaid workers calling out sick.
The effectiveness of this plan is, however, questionable. Houston Airport currently only has two of four TSA checkpoints open due to staffing shortages, and TSA PreCheck and CLEAR are currently suspended.
On Sunday, nearly 40% of rostered TSA officers at IAH failed to show up for work, although the administration has failed to share information on staffing shortages following the deployment of ICE.
Airport officials are urging passengers to get to the airport as early as possible so that they don’t miss their flights. New anchor Julie Nelson, who works for KARE 11 in Minneapolis, claimed her daughter had been waiting in a TSA line at IAH for eight hours on Sunday.
After missing her flight, Nelson’s daughter chose to sleep at the airport in the hope of being first in line to make it through TSA on Monday.
During Sunday’s news conference, Hommendy confirmed that both Black Boxes from the Air Canada Express aircraft had been recovered from the plane and had already been transported back to NTSB headquarters.
The cockpit voice recorder has already been verified as not being damaged in the crash, while work to establish whether the flight data recorder has salvageable data will take place on Monday.
The two pilots of Air Canada flight AC-8646 were tragically killed in the crash, but a flight attendant who was sitting at the front of the plane has been hailed as a miracle survivor.
Veteran crew member Solange Tremblay was found still strapped in her jumpseat over 100 metres from the aircraft after being ejected through the gaping hole where the cockpit used to be.
Although Solange was seriously injured in the crash, she is expected to survive, having suffered multiple fractures.
