GoFundMe campaign comes amid questions about staffing levels at LaGuardia on night of crash
An online fundraiser for an Air Canada flight attendant severely injured during the fatal LaGuardia crash has pulled in nearly $250,000, as her family braces for multiple surgeries and a long rehabilitation in New York.
As of the latest update on the GoFundMe page, the campaign for senior flight attendant Solange Tremblay stood at 91% or $226,236 raised out of $250,000.
The page says it’s been set up by her daughter Sarah Lépine and a cousin. She lays out in stark detail what happened the night Air Canada Jazz flight 8646 from Montreal to LaGuardia collided with a Port Authority fire truck on landing.
“The collision resulted in the fatalities of both pilots as well as several serious injuries amongst staff and passengers,” she writes.
Her mother was the senior flight attendant aboard the flight and was sitting in her jump seat in the forward cabin of the plane, directly behind the cockpit. During the crash, she was ejected over 320 feet from the wreckage, says the GoFundMe page.
“She was found still strapped in her jump seat lying on the tarmac… My mom was conscious for all of this and has sustained severe injuries from this event. She continues to fight and recover at a hospital in New York.”
Shattered limbs, multiple surgeries
According to the appeal, Tremblay’s injuries and treatment have included two shattered legs (open fractures) requiring multiple surgeries where metal plates are needed, a fractured spine, skin graphs for her legs and a blood transfusion due to complications from her first surgery.
“My mom has suffered so much from this event and regrettably her struggles are far from over,” Lépine wrote. “She will have to undergo several other surgeries, along with intensive rehabilitation to learn how to walk again. At the moment, our greatest fear is the risk of infection which could lead to other horrifying complications if her injuries become infected.”
The fundraiser sketches a portrait of a woman whose life revolved around aviation and passengers.
“My mother dedicated her entire life as a flight attendant, and was very proud of her work,” Lépine wrote. “She loved serving the public and helping them travel safely from their respective destinations.”
Controller staffing under scrutiny
As Tremblay’s family navigates her recovery, investigators are scrutinizing what was happening inside LaGuardia’s control tower when the Air Canada Express jet collided with the fire truck at 11:37 pm.
Air traffic controller staffing at LaGuardia on the night of the crash “may have violated the facility’s procedures by combining roles before midnight,” according to a document cited by CTV News.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters that two controllers were working in the glass-enclosed section of the tower at the time of the crash: “There was a local controller managing the active runways and the immediate airspace and a controller-in-charge who was also providing pilots with departure clearance,” she said, according to CTV News.
“It is not clear who was conducting the duties of the ground controller. We have conflicting information.”
If the controller involved in the crash was performing both air and ground duties, that would be inconsistent with the LaGuardia tower’s standard operating procedures, said CTV News.
“Positions at LaGuardia Tower are not to be consolidated to one position prior to midnight local time or 90 minutes after the start of the shift, whichever is later,” said a 2023 LaGuardia Tower Standard Operating Procedures document seen by Reuters.
On the night of the Air Canada crash, weather-related delays resulted in 70 commercial flights taking off or landing at the airport between 10 p.m. and 11:37 p.m., compared with an average of 53 in the same time frame since 2022, according to Cirium data cited by CTV News.
