NEW YORK — A veteran Air Canada flight attendant was violently hurled from her jetliner when it collided with a fire truck on a rain-slicked runway at LaGuardia Airport late Sunday night — yet she survived the terrifying ordeal still buckled into her jump seat, which was found more than 300 feet from the wreckage.

“It’s a complete miracle,” her daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Quebec’s TVA Nouvelles. “At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than 300 feet from the plane. They found her, and she was still strapped into the seat. She had a guardian angel watching over her. It could have been much worse.”

The attendant, Solange Tremblay, suffered multiple injuries, including a broken leg, her daughter said. She is the only known survivor to have been thrown such a dramatic distance while remaining secured in her crew jump seat — a fold-down chair designed specifically for flight attendants during takeoff and landing.

The crash involved Air Canada Flight 8646 (operated by Jazz Aviation as Flight 646), which had departed Montreal and was landing at LaGuardia when it struck a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey fire truck on Runway 4 around 11:40 p.m. The aircraft, which can weigh as much as 84,000 pounds, was traveling at a relatively low speed of 24 mph at the moment of impact, according to FlightRadar24 data. The fire truck had been racing to assist a taxiing United Airlines flight that was dealing with its own emergency.

Both Air Canada pilots were killed. Dozens of passengers, other crew members, and the two Port Authority officers inside the fire truck were injured. The officers were thrown from their seats by the force of the collision, sources said.

Preliminary information indicates that air-traffic control cleared both the jet and the fire truck to use the same runway at the same time — a critical breakdown that authorities are now scrutinizing. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has launched a full investigation and is expected to determine whether faulty communication from the tower played a decisive role.

Chilling audio from air-traffic control captured the frantic seconds before and after the collision. The controller can be heard desperately shouting at the fire truck: “Stop, stop, stop, stop! Truck 1, stop, stop, stop! Stop, Truck 1! Stop!”

Seconds later, after the impact, the controller addressed the aircraft: “Jazz 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now.”

As emergency vehicles rushed to the scene, the controller instructed an incoming Frontier Airlines flight bound for Miami to go around. The Frontier pilots, visibly shaken, radioed back: “We got stuff in progress for that, man, that wasn’t good to watch.”

The controller then admitted the pressure of the moment: “Yeah, I tried to reach out to ‘em … And we were dealing with an emergency, and I messed up.” A crew member on the Frontier flight offered immediate reassurance: “No, you did the best you could.”

Another flight, Delta 2603 arriving from Detroit, was also diverted and ultimately landed at nearby JFK Airport, according to FlightAware tracking.

The survival of Solange Tremblay stands out as one of the most astonishing elements of the crash. Jump seats are reinforced and anchored to the fuselage precisely to protect crew during emergencies; the fact that hers remained intact and carried her more than the length of a football field speaks to both the violence of the impact and the seat’s remarkable engineering. At just 24 mph, the collision was far from a high-speed catastrophe, yet the 84,000-pound mass of the regional jet generated enough force to shear the fire truck and eject the attendant — underscoring how even low-speed runway incursions can be deadly when heavy aircraft and emergency vehicles meet on wet pavement.

The preliminary finding of simultaneous clearances points to a classic “runway incursion” scenario, a persistent concern at busy airports like LaGuardia. The tower was juggling multiple emergencies — the United Airlines issue on the taxiway and arriving traffic — which likely contributed to the lapse. The controller’s own recorded admission of error, followed by the compassionate response from fellow pilots, humanizes the immense pressure air-traffic controllers face every day.

While the NTSB’s final report may take months, this incident already highlights three key aviation-safety lessons: the absolute necessity of unambiguous ground-to-air communication, the added hazards of wet runways and low-visibility conditions, and the life-saving value of properly designed crew restraints. For the families of the two deceased pilots and the dozens of injured passengers and first responders, the “guardian angel” that watched over Solange Tremblay offers little comfort — but for the wider aviation community, her survival may ultimately help prevent future tragedies.