An Air Canada plane collided with a firetruck at LaGuardia Airport on March 22, killing the captain and co-pilot

A survivor of the LaGuardia Airport crash recalled what spurred him into action in a time of crisis.

Late Sunday, March 22, Joe Capio was on board Air Canada Flight 8646 from Montreal to New York City. When the plane touched down on the runway, it almost immediately collided with a firetruck crossing its path. The crash killed the pilot and co-pilot and left more than 40 hospitalized.

“After the crash the plane had come to a full stop,” Capio said in an interview. “We were kind of turned at an angle. We were kind of disoriented as to what had happened, so it took a little time for us to process what had occurred.”

A few moments passed without any instructions from the crew. The passengers didn’t yet know the cockpit had been destroyed in the hit.

According to Capio, in the absence of an announcement, someone shouted out, which he said spurred the rest of the passengers into action.

“An individual at the front of the plane yelled, ‘We should open the emergency exits.’ And that kind of clicked for us, there’s four emergency exits,” he said. “Two on the left, two on the right. I was on the back left. We followed the protocol, we pulled the lever down, pulled the door out, jumped out of the side of the plane and then we all started to exit.”

An Air Canada Express jet and Port Authority fire truck at LaGuardia Airport on March 24, 2026 in New York.Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo

Others who survived the crash have also spoken out, sharing similar stories about those moments.

Passenger Jack Cabot told CNN that the plane “came in pretty hard” when it landed, and the accident happened almost “immediately” after it hit the runway.

“It was just chaos from there. About five seconds later we had come to a stop. But in that short period, I mean, everybody was hunkered down,” he continued, “and everybody was screaming.”

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty

Speaking to NBC News, Rebecca Liquori said that passengers “heard the pilot try to brake, trying to prevent the collision.” She credited the pair, since identified as Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest, for minimizing the damage with their quick reaction time.

“I’m just so appreciative that they were able to save us, but I’m just so sad that they weren’t able to make it home to their families,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here had it not been for the pilot acting quickly.”

An investigation into the crash is still ongoing.

However, U.S.-based aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told PEOPLE that the incident could have been much worse.

“It’s sad that we had two fatalities, the captain and the first officer, but looking at those pictures, it’s miraculous that we didn’t have more,” he said.

Speaking about how pilots are trained to react to obstacles on the runway, he noted that the response can sometime be to “veer left or right to correct the situation.” However, in this instance, he said “that could have been even worse than what happened.”

“Based on what we know right now, the pilots did the best that they could with the situation they were presented [with], and though they lost their lives, they actually could have saved a lot of lives based on their actions,” he opined.