Memorial near Trudeau airport honours pilots killed in LaGuardia crash

Montreal’s airport authority has installed a memorial to the two Air Canada Express pilots killed in a runway collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in March.

“To these two men who lost their lives while performing their duties and pursuing their passion,” says the text of a billboard at the memorial site featuring photos of the pilots, 30-year-old Quebecer Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther, 24, of Ontario.

The memorial site is at Jacques-de-Lesseps Park, an official aviation observation park near Montreal-Trudeau International Airport designed for plane spotting.

Following the deadly crash, aviation enthusiasts gathered at the park to lay flowers and other tributes, said Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) spokesperson Émilie Chevrette. The permanent memorial was installed on April 15.

The park, opened in 2012 by ADM to mark the airport’s 70th anniversary, is at the end of Jenkins Ave. in Dorval, between the airport and Côte-de-Liesse Rd. It is named after pioneering French aviator Jacques de Lesseps (1883-1927).

Forest and Gunther died on March 22, just after Air Canada Express Flight 8646 touched down at LaGuardia and collided with an aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle crossing the runway.

Their bodies were returned to Canada on March 26.

A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board released on Thursday found that a lack of transponders on ground vehicles, along with communication failures, were possible factors in the crash.

The report states that a fire truck operator heard an air traffic controller’s radio instructions to stop but did not know for whom the message was intended. And because ground vehicles were not equipped with transponders, the surveillance system did not generate an alert for air traffic controllers.

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