Plane collides with vehicle in New York

Well, Allen, certainly, given what's going on, details, as we understand them, are fluid and changing. But this flight was coming in from Montreal, had landed and was slowing down on the runway when this apparent collision happened. You're looking at images of the plane sort of inverted with the nose or the area where there should be the nose up in the air. It is likely that that occurred as passengers were evacuating out the back. That very well could have shifted the center of gravity on the airplane, resulting in it standing up the way it is in some of those images. So that likely occurred after the collision here. The pictures are very concerning because the front of the airplane looks to have taken significant damage. That's, of course, where the pilots would have been. A flight attendant tends to be towards the front of that aircraft as well, the CRJ-900. 24 mile an hour collision. You don't know how fast the other vehicle was going, but clearly a significant crash here. You have to be concerned about the injuries to the people in that vehicle, as well as folks on board that airplane.

And CBS News New York right now is working to learn of any possible injuries involved in this incident. Kris, while I have you here, so we do understand the vehicle on the ground was involved in this incident. Can you walk us through some of the logistics of how these vehicles move around the tarmac, move around the airport in order to avoid something like this from happening? It's required that these vehicles, trucks, fire trucks, cars, whatever it may be move throughout the airport. But, obviously, there are safety protocols in place to prevent them from coming into the path of an incoming plane. Walk us through that.

Yeah, generally speaking, there is communication between the ground vehicles and air traffic control, particularly around active runways. And in this case, what little bits of air traffic control audio I've been able to go through, it does sound like a controller tried to stop this vehicle leading up to this collision. How it ended up on the runway will be the center point of what will likely be an NTSB investigation here. We know the National Transportation Safety-- excuse me. We know the National Transportation Safety Board has been notified of this accident. They're going to gather information. It seems extremely likely that this will be an NTSB investigation. It has also stopped operations at the airport, for obvious reasons. But the big question is where was the communication breakdown that allowed for this vehicle to end up on an active runway as a plane was landing? That should not happen. There are communication protocols in place to prevent that. And in this case, it didn't happen.

Yeah, and, again, we do not know what actually caused this collision here. But you mentioned the model of the plane here, CRJ-900. That's a smaller jet. They are, as I understand, a number or, I guess, in the fleet of many different airliners here in America. I've flown on one. Kris, I'm sure you've flown on one as well. Do you know anything about the details of the size of the jet or how many people could be potentially on board at max capacity compared to some of the larger planes we might see in and out of LaGuardia?

It will depend a bit on the configuration of that airplane. It's a regional jet. So you're looking at 70 to 90 people potentially on board, depending on how Air Canada has configured that airplane. It is not as large as a 737 or an A321, but it is a sizable regional jet.

And our viewers here are watching some of the FDNY EMS response, a massive, massive response there at the airport right now, as they're all working to, of course, tend to anybody there on the tarmac, in that plane, in that vehicle. The airport remains shut down, Kris, for what could be a large, long, long, significant amount of time here this morning. This is, of course, on top of what is already a delayed DHS, I guess, funding issue that's been slowing down some of our airports across the country. How is this with LaGuardia being such a massive airport, with such, I guess, connections to all other airports across the country here, how is this incident going to domino effect into air travel on a national scale, starting, I guess, this morning?

Yeah, certainly. And it looks like the Air Canada CRJ-900 is equipped with 76 passenger seats, typically two flight attendants and two pilots, so maximum potential of 80 people on board that airplane. And it does look like, based on images, that many were able to get out through the overwing exits of the aircraft. Obviously, how many people up front could have been hurt, that's a big question. What will this mean? Well, obviously the priority right now is assessing the injured and getting them help. From there, they'll need to make a determination of do they clear the airplane from the runway and when. Does it need to stay intact before investigators get on scene? Is it something that can be assessed quickly and the vehicles moved off the runway? But I would expect significant disruptions to LaGuardia tomorrow, particularly tomorrow morning. It is a busy airport. It's going to lead to, at the very least, significant delays, probably cancellations tomorrow as this accident is investigated. You also then have to inspect the runway for damage, make any repairs to any of the equipment there. So it seems highly likely that there will be limited operations or reduced operations, at the least, at LaGuardia as we start this week.

All right, Kris Van Cleave here speaking with us early this morning. Kris, thank you so much for your insight into this incident here. We are continuing to try and piece this together here at CBS News New York. If you are just now coming in and joining us, you are looking at images of a massive EMS and FDNY, NYPD first-responders response to LaGuardia Airport, where we have confirmed that an Air Canada flight has connected, ran into, collided with a Port Authority vehicle there at the airport on the tarmac. The plane was moving at about 24 miles per hour, landing there at the airport when it collided. We're working on learning about injuries or anybody that was involved, either in that vehicle that was on the ground or on board that plane. It is a CRJ-900, which we've been told has about 80 to 90 people on board at any given time, max capacity. We do not know how many people were on board that plane, and we do not know if there are any injuries. But from the severity of the damage to the front of that plane, we're going to continue to make sure we can confirm that information for you right here at CBS News New York. Now, we are unsure of exactly what caused that collision at this time, but we do know our area has been dealing with rain as all of this happened. The rain was actually coming down when that plane landed at LaGuardia. We're going to go over to Vanessa Murdock right now with our forecast here. Vanessa, you learned about this collision about the same time that I did. In fact, I believe you might have been in our immersive studio talking about rainfall at the time. Can you walk us through the conditions around 11:38 when we've been told this plane collided with that vehicle? Of course. So we know there was light rain falling. We set up the radar to show you roughly the time frame of when the crash occurred, just around that 11:30 PM hour, so light rain falling there. In addition, the other conditions we can specify for you is that there were fog and mist at that point in time. The winds were out of the Northeast at 8 miles per hour. Those winds are not significant. And visibility was down to about four miles. Now, this particular radar image shows that we're kind of on the tail end of the rainfall around 11:30. And roughly speaking, about 8/10 to a tenth of an inch of rain had already fallen when the plane crash occurred. So we did have some preceding rain. But, again, it's not epic rainfall, 8/10 of an inch, not that big a deal, but the tarmac was certainly completely covered over at the time. You could see it was very wet out there. But as far as winds and visibility, those conditions were not overly impactful. We typically would think winds could be involved when they're gusting 30, 40, 50 miles per hour. That was not at all the case in this particular scenario. So this is a loop of the radar as we look at right now. So 1 o'clock, at this moment in time, skies are on the drier side with more heavy rain to come as crews continue to work the scene and try to piece together what happened there. More heavy rain is on the way. But certainly, when the plane crash did occur, it was light rain, fog and mist, winds out of the Northeast at 8:00, and visibility down to four miles. And Allen that was-- these are not overwhelming weather conditions, but certainly not easy when the tarmac is wet. Absolutely, Vanessa. Thank you so much for that insight. We will have live team coverage for you all this morning on CBS News New York, beginning at 4:30 AM for updates on this collision. If you need any more information throughout the night, go to cbsnewyork.com. I'm Allen Devlin. This has been a CBS News New York Special Report. Thank you. We'll see you in a couple of hours.