They were indeed the only controller, working both ground and tower frequencies.
Edit:- It's Atlanta.
The airspace that combines JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, is the busiest airspace in the US.
Lots of pilots here have been complaining for years about how the US controllers are so much better, they can handle much more traffic, etc.
> why do you think nobody who you'd actually want teaching public school actually teaches public school in the US?
We're currently doing school visits for our kid, in a low-performing school district, and the teachers and administrators we've met have been impressive. I've worked in education, and visited a lot of schools in another professional capacity, so I know the questions to ask, and things to look for. I have no illusions about there being absolutely terrible teachers out there (and I'll tell you some horror stories, if you'd like), and doubtless any (hypothetical) bad teachers at those schools are being kept away from prospective parents, but your statement is hyperbolic in the extreme. The problems in the US school system are legion, but "every single teacher is crap" is not remotely true.
I was at school for 12 years.
There were two good teachers.
The rest of them, and all the staff at those four schools, are hopefully spending the rest of eternity burning in hell.
Should we do better? You bet your ass. I have all kinds of ideas....
Nevertheless, both of our experiences put the lie to the GP's hyperbole. Bad as the rest might have been, you had at least two teachers who were exactly whom you'd want to be there.
Maybe it seems like I'm being pedantic, picking on GP's wording, but I'm really not. I'm trying to point that even those of us who had a bad time in education (and, to be clear: I did, too) experienced a few bright spots. It's important, if we're going to engage ourselves with any kind of reform, a) not to shit on the entire teaching profession, b) to consider what made those good teachers good, and c) think about how to support the quality people already in the system, and to attract more like them to it.
Which means either the compensation is insufficient to attract and retain the necessary number of qualified individuals, or the FAA lacks the resources to train an appropriate number of qualified individuals. Either way, it's about money.
This small mistake (and it is initially small, just catastrophic) is a system breakdown, not necessarily a staffing breakdown. Though staffing is definitely a wider issue in the NAS.
Edit to add: looking at this incident closer it appears LGA was busy enough to make a single tower/ground controller an obviously bad plan. Still, systemically, there's enough low hanging fruit here, like ADSb in for the airport trucks or hold short line guard lights. I hope the takeaway isn't just "don't have controllers make mistakes".
That would have given the jet a chance to hear the truck cleared to cross the runway they were landing on.
The audio sounds unsure when giving the clearance - but possibly hindsight ears at work.
The obvious problem is what happens when operations become abnormal. ATC shouldn't be staffed for normal operations, because then abnormal operations lead to catastrophe. Welcome to last night: the weather is bad, which causes a plane to abort two takeoffs, which causes that plane to need emergency services. This increases the controller's workload beyond his capacity, so he accidentally clears the emergency vehicle to cross in front of a landing airplane, and they can't see the airplane because the weather is bad, so they follow the instruction and promptly get hit with an airplane.
When some bad weather can be the difference between "this is fine, one controller can handle it" and two dead pilots, you need to be staffed for bad weather.
Should they be combined at LGA when both (crossing) runways are in use, and there's an incident on the field? (The fire trucks were on their way to investigate a smell on the flight deck of another airplane that had to abort takeoff twice.)
I'd say hell no.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/nyregion/faa-air-traffic-...
The emergency vehicle was told to stop and did not. Even a dozen ATC wouldn't have helped in that case.
Watch the video.
Other trucks slow down, but truck 1 does not even try to slow down. I'd also argue that driving so quickly that you cannot maintain control is its own problem. Getting to an emergency 20 seconds later almost never matters as much as arriving safely.
Understaffing is absolutely a factor. Had tower and ground not been combined, the erroneous clearance probably wouldn't have been issued.
The ARFF truck not complying with the stop instruction is absolutely a factor. Had they heard and complied, the accident wouldn't have happened.
And there are likely additional factors that will come out in the investigation.
I recommend reading some final aviation accident reports from the NTSB to learn more about how these investigations proceed and what kinds of conclusions and recommendations they include.