(CNN) — An Air Canada plane collided with an emergency vehicle on the runway at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport in the late hours of Sunday night, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of people, including a flight attendant thrown from the plane while still strapped to her seat.

Emergency vehicles flooded the runway and passengers inched out onto the wing of the aircraft in the aftermath of the crash.

“It was just chaos in there,” said Jack Cabot, one of 72 passengers aboard the flight traveling from Montreal. “Everybody was hunkered down and everybody was screaming pretty quickly.”

Both Canadian and American authorities are investigating the collision, which follows several high-profile aviation disasters in 2025 — including a shocking midair collision between a military helicopter and a commercial jet near Washington, DC, which left 67 dead — that brought scrutiny to the industry and triggered calls for reform.

The crash marks the first deaths at LaGuardia, the New York area’s third-busiest airport, in 34 years, Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia said Monday.

Sunday night’s collision brought operations at the airport – a major transit hub that served over 32 million passengers last year – screeching to a halt before it reopened Monday afternoon. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled at the airport, and runway 4 will remain closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to a public notice from the FAA.

The closure came as a Department of Homeland Security funding shutdown has led to TSA staffing shortages and massive lines at airports across the country, with some passengers reporting hours spent waiting to go through security.

There’s no evidence the shutdown contributed to the collision; air traffic controllers, unlike TSA agents, are still paid during this partial shutdown.

Just three minutes elapsed between when the Air Canada flight was cleared to land and when it collided with the fire truck.

Air Canada Flight 8646 took off from Montreal-Trudeau International Airport shortly after 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday night. The plane, with four crew members, arrived at LaGuardia about an hour later, according to the flight tracking site FlightRadar24. It was cleared to land at around 11:35 p.m.