I don’t usually write about things still sitting heavily on my chest. I typically give myself time to process, let the news settle, and come back with some perspective. This week I can’t do that.
Many of you saw the news about the Air Canada jet that crashed at LaGuardia Airport. My Canadian roots kicked in immediately (they always do), but what stayed with me had nothing to do with geography. It had everything to do with leadership, the kind that doesn’t happen in a boardroom or a strategy session. The kind that happens in two seconds.
Captain Antoine Forest was 30 years old. First Officer Mackenzie Gunther was 24. They were on final approach into LaGuardia, one of the busiest and most compressed airports in the country, after a two-hour delay out of Montreal. Takeoff and landing are statistically the most dangerous parts of any flight, but when you’re trained and the approach looks clean, you don’t necessarily feel that weight on the way down. Then, in an instant, there was a fire truck on the runway.
My son Sahib is a firefighter. I’ve stood next to those trucks up close. They are built like armored tanks, and they are not going to absorb the impact of a regional jet the way a barrier might. So when I picture what those two young men saw in that fraction of a second, I feel it differently than I might have otherwise.
Every human instinct says swerve. Pull right, pull left, do anything but go straight. But swerving into a vehicle that size, at that angle and speed, could have sheared the fuselage and killed everyone on board. Those two young men chose to take the impact head-on, braking as hard as they could to minimize the devastation. All 76 people on board survived. They didn’t.
I’ve thought about that decision more times than I can count this week.
The Leadership Decision
The leadership lesson here is one of the clearest I’ve come across: sometimes the right decision isn’t the one your instincts are screaming at you to make. It’s the one that protects the most people, even when the personal cost is immediate and total. That’s not a concept from a leadership book. That was a decision made in two seconds by a 30-year-old and a 24-year-old, and they made it without hesitation.
The Operational Reality
There’s a second lesson here, and it’s harder to sit with because it’s about operations and accountability. This accident was preventable. The air traffic controller cleared the truck to cross the active runway while the aircraft was already on short final, then broadcast “stop, stop, stop, stop” before finally calling “Truck 1, stop” by name. By the time that specific instruction came through, it was already too late. What makes this harder is that at the time of the accident, only two controllers were on duty, and each was simultaneously working two positions. Two people, managing four jobs, at one of the busiest airports in the country. I’m not an expert in air traffic control and I won’t pretend to have every answer. What I do know is this: when people are stretched across more than they can reasonably hold, the margin for error disappears. Vague instructions and under-resourced teams don’t just create inefficiency. Sometimes they create irreversible outcomes.
I’m sorry this week’s column is heavier than usual. Most of us spend entire careers hoping we’ll have the clarity and courage to lead well when it counts. Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther answered that question at 30 and 24 years old, in the dark, in the rain, in two seconds, and 76 people are alive because of it. They were heroes, and they were leaders, and they proved both without hesitation.
