Daughter of Air Canada flight attendant speaks about mother’s miracle LaGuardia Airport crash

The daughter of a flight attendant thrown from a passenger jet during the deadly LaGuardia runway crash has described her survival as a “total miracle”.

The Air Canada Express passenger jet, carrying more than 70 passengers, was coming in to land at about 160km/h when it slammed into a fire truck crossing the runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Monday night.

Photos from the scene showed how catastrophic the impact was, with the front of the passenger jet obliterated and the cockpit completely torn off.

The fire truck was a mangled mess of metal on the side of the runway.

And further down the runway lay flight attendant Solange Tremblay, still strapped into her seat.

Tremblay’s daughter Sarah Lépine shed further light on the horrific incident.

“At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 100 metres from the plane. They found her, and she was still strapped into her seat,” Lépine told Canadian broadcaster TVA Nouvelles.

Tremblay suffered multiple fractures to one leg and is expected to undergo surgery, but is otherwise OK.

“I’m still trying to understand how all this happened,” Lépine said.

“She had a guardian angel watching over her. It could have been much worse.”

Two pilots were killed in the crash and have since been identified as Antoine Forest and MacKenzie Gunther, both based in Canada.

Forty-one people were taken to hospital, some with very serious injuries. Dozens have since been released.

Two people were believed to be in the fire truck, identified as Sergeant Michael Orsillo and Officer Adrian Baez.

The pair is being treated for what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.

Investigators are pointing to human error as the likely cause of the crash, focusing on how a vehicle was cleared to cross the runway moments before the landing aircraft arrived.

LaGuardia Airport remained closed on Tuesday morning as authorities continued their investigation, though some runways have since begun reopening.

Distressing audio from air traffic control has since revealed what happened in the moments leading up to the collision.

In the recording, an air traffic controller can be heard desperately trying to stop the collision.

“Frontier 4195, just stop there, please. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop truck one, stop. Stop truck one, stop.”

After the crash, the devastated controller can be heard saying, “That wasn’t good to watch.”

Another voice responds: “Yeah, I know I was here, I tried to reach out to my staff... we were dealing with an emergency earlier.”

“No man, you did the best you could,” comes the reply.