LaGuardia Controllers Often Faced Late Sunday Rush Before Crash

The two air traffic controllers at LaGuardia Airport were grappling with a higher-than-anticipated workload, complicated by foul weather, when an inbound Air Canada Express jet plowed into a fire truck on Sunday evening, killing both pilots.

The heavy, late-evening traffic wasn’t out of the ordinary for LaGuardia, data from aviation analytics company Cirium show. Air crews and controllers consistently face a late-evening rush to clear planes from the busy New York City airport where scheduled flight operations generally cease around midnight.

In the stretch between 10 p.m., shortly before the first controller clocked in on Sunday, through the fatal accident ...