NTSB chair: LaGuardia crash investigator was stuck in TSA line for hours

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that long lines at airport security checkpoints caused by the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown delayed investigators arriving at the scene of a deadly collision between a jet and a fire truck at LaGuardia International Airport.

An air traffic control specialist was stuck in line for three hours at an airport in Houston, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who claimed officials had to “beg to see if we can get her through.”

“It’s been a really, really big challenge to get the entire team here, and they’re still arriving as I speak,” Homendy said during a Monday evening news conference, adding that investigators were coming by train, plane, and car.

The NTSB is leading the investigation into the crash, which occurred late Sunday when a plane attempting to land on the runway struck an emergency vehicle that was responding to an incident with a United Airlines flight, according to Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The pilot and co-pilot were killed, and 41 passengers were taken to the hospital, most of whom were later released, officials said. A total of 72 passengers and 4 crew members were on board the Jazz Aviation flight operating on behalf of Air Canada.

Homendy explained that there was still a “tremendous, tremendous amount of debris” spread out over the runways.

“It’s pretty expansive, and we want to make sure, because as you’re walking around, you can get injured,” she continued. “There’s also hazardous materials, of course, on the firefighting vehicle itself, so we want to make sure of their safety.”

She noted that the aircraft’s “black boxes” — cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — had been retrieved and sent to an NTSB lab in Washington, D.C. for review.

The DHS funding lapse has strained Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operations as officers continue to go unpaid, leading to higher callout rates and hundreds quitting the force altogether.

Acting DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Lauren Bis told The Hill on Monday that over 400 TSA officers had quit their jobs since the partial government shutdown began on Feb. 14.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were spotted Monday at multiple airports across the country, days after President Trump announced he would deploy them to assist with the travel disruptions.

Border czar Tom Homan told CNN on Sunday that he did not anticipate immigration officers being directly involved in screening passengers, however.

“Wherever we can provide extra security, I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because we’re not trained in that,” Homan told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

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