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U.S. National Transportation Safety ‌Board chair Jennifer Homendy is holding a news conference at 1:30 p.m. ET to detail some findings from the cockpit and flight data recorders that were recovered from the ⁠Air Canada Express jet, operated by regional partner Jazz Aviation.

The NTSB also plans to interview an air traffic controller who was juggling another emergency in the run-up to the crash.

The investigation is U.S.-led, but the Transportation Safety Board of Canada will also take part.

Pilots Antoine Forest, from Coteau-du-Lac, Que., and Mackenzie Gunther were killed when Air ⁠Canada Express Flight 8646, coming from Montreal, collided with a Port Authority firetruck at New York's LaGuardia airport late Sunday night. 

Air traffic audio indicates the fire truck was cleared to cross the runway before the collision. "I messed up," a controller can be heard saying afterward. 

But as of late Monday, authorities are offering few details about the cause of the crash or air traffic control staffing, saying the investigation will take time. Investigators say they've recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

The airport resumed operations this afternoon, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board says LaGuardia's main runway, where the crash occurred, will be closed for days while evidence is gathered. 

More than 40 people were hospitalized following the crash.

The two occupants of the fire truck were taken to hospital but are expected to be released, and a flight attendant who was thrown from the plane will need surgery for multiple fractures to one leg, according to her daughter.

The flight was carrying 72 passengers. 

This question can't yet be answered with certainty, but some clues exist. 

First, reverse thrust appears to have been used. This can be seen on the engines mounted on the plane's tail. It is typical on landing that pilots will activate the reverse thrust, where the engine casing slides back to redirect airflow forward. 

In photos of the wreckage, the engine casing appears to be in position to provide reverse thrust. 

The flight data recorder, now recovered, will indicate whether pilots activated maximum reverse thrust, possibly after spotting the truck. The cockpit voice recorder, also now recovered, would likely contain reaction from the pilots. 

Both were killed. 

Passenger Clément Lelièvre told The Canadian Press he believed the pilots had reacted. 

"Just as the plane touched down, the pilot braked extremely hard," said Lelièvre, a French national and frequent flyer.

This type of aircraft also has brakes on the landing gear. Both the brakes and the reverse thrust can be applied at varying levels, much like the brakes on a car. 

Data from the tracking site Flightradar24 also shows the aircraft deviating to the right of the centre line as it rumbled down the runway, immediately before the crossing with taxiway D, where the collision occurred. 

While it is possible the pilots steered the aircraft to avoid the fire truck, which had approached from the left, none of this is definitive.

But it will fuel questions about whether the pilots saw the fire truck enter the runway, and attempted to avoid it.

He said the site survey is done first, with the airplane staying in place, so everything can be documented — "the distances, the angles, the locations of all the different parts and components of the truck and the aircraft."

During that process, he said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will also be recovered, and then taken to playback centres to be downloaded and interpreted. 

"This is a process that is very intensive — labour intensive, information intensive — and it does take time," he said. 

We interviewed Montreal resident Sarah Dorner, who said she was sleeping when her phone rang late last night. It was her husband, Chris Pal, calling from New York.

"He says, 'I'm OK. I was just in a plane crash. I'm fine. I helped a bunch of people off of the plane,'" recounted Dorner, who could hear emergency vehicles in the background.

Her husband described the crash as a shock, with his face hitting the seat in front of him. A passenger opened an emergency exit.

He got down, could smell fuel and quickly encouraged others to make the jump, but some were hesitant, she said. Shortly after people got out, the plane tilted back and he snapped a photo, she said.

"I'm glad he's safe," she said.

A key part of the investigation will look at what's called the airport surface detection system, or ASD. 

The ASD display is a kind of ground radar that provides visual information to the controllers about the movement of planes on the tarmac.    

Homendy says her agency has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to provide a replay of the airport surface detection display that the controllers would have seen in the moments leading up to the collision. 

Homendy says the runway where the Air Canada Express jet collided with a firefighting truck will likely be closed for some time while the investigation continues. 

"There is a lot of debris. We need to go through all of that and to figure out what we need to take back to the NTSB, to our labs," she said. 

"That's all evidence and we need to document that first," Homendy said. 

She said it would be "days" before the runway can open, but said she is not sure how many days.

Questions have been raised about whether LaGuardia's air traffic control tower was adequately staffed at the time of the crash, but for now, the NTSB chairperson is not making any statements about that. 

Homendy says the agency has lots of information about the crash but needs to verify it before they'll make it public. 

"We have a lot of data right now, a lot of information, including information on tower staffing," Homendy told the news conference. 

"But the NTSB deals in facts. We don't speculate. We don't take one person at their word. We verify that information carefully before we provide it," she said. 

"That is something we still have to do."

Homendy says the NTSB, the Port Authority and emergency responders cut a hole in the roof of the plane to access both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, often colloquially referred to as the black boxes. 

The two devices were driven back to NTSB labs in Washington, D.C., today and officials have verified that the cockpit voice recorder was not damaged, Homendy said. 

She said the investigators will begin work on the flight data recorder tomorrow.

The chairwoman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the agency investigating the crash, says the full team is still not yet on scene. 

In a news conference here at LaGuardia airport, Jennifer Homendy said some of their investigators were delayed getting to New York because of ongoing security delays at airports around the country.   

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