AvTalk - Aviation Podcast · Flightradar24

AC8646 collides with an ARFF truck on the runway

·1 hr 3 min·2 clips

At 11:37 p.m. on March 22, a CRJ-900 and an ARFF truck collided at LaGuardia.

AvTalk episode 363 opens on a Tuesday again. The hosts joke that they probably should stop recording on Tuesdays, though the reason for the shift is a good one. Ian is in Los Angeles as a guest of United Airlines. He is there for a stretch that includes new aircraft, onboard product changes, route network updates, and a segment with people he spoke to earlier in the day. The conversation then turns to LaGuardia. They discuss the collision between a CRJ 900 and an airport rescue firefighting truck, and they note that the latest NTSB briefings only sharpen the picture a little. The hosts are still left with more anger, confusion, and concern than certainty. From there, the episode moves into aircraft storage and repositioning. They talk about planes moving from Doha, one aircraft that went from LAX to Spain for storage after a commercial flight, and the broader sight of jets sitting idle at airports. The show uses Emirates as a concrete example. Its A350s are running at about half capacity, the A380s are a little over half, the 777-300ERs are down as well, and the freighter fleet is still operating close to pre-war averages for flight activity. The whole thing starts to feel like a mini COVID event for the Middle East. A Qatar anecdote makes that comparison land harder. The hosts recall the problem of finding somewhere to park aircraft when long-term storage in Qatar is not practical, for environmental reasons and otherwise. The episode then widens again. Vietnam is the first entire country mentioned as warning that airlines may need to cut flights from April because fuel may not be available for every schedule. That warning begins to spread to Thailand and other Southeast Asian states as the discussion connects fuel supply to Middle East sourcing and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed to nearly all traffic. By then, the hosts are clear that there is no easy fix. The episode ends with the sense that the pressure will get worse before it gets better.

As heard by us

A brisk aviation news hour that treats disruption as an operational problem, not a spectacle.

Episode 363 keeps one foot in a United Airlines stop in Los Angeles and the other in the LaGuardia collision between a CRJ 900 and an airport rescue firefighting truck.

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Why you'd press play

You want the LaGuardia collision explained before the rest of the aviation week gets away from you.

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