Passengers face hourslong security lines at LaGuardia Airport; NTSB probes wreckage on runway

Hourslong security lines of passengers returned Tuesday to LaGuardia Airport where crash investigators were examining wreckage of the doomed jetliner that struck a fire truck over the weekend, killing both pilots.

Just after 6:30 a.m. in Terminal B, airport personnel were assessing passengers based on whose flights were departing at what time, as passenger lines stretched across the entire terminal, with a half dozen switchbacks. The TSA PreCheck line was far shorter, but still far longer than is typical.

Runway 4 — where the jetliner, Air Canada 8646, was landing late Sunday when it collided with the Port Authority fire truck — remained closed Tuesday, reducing the capacity of LaGuardia, one of the nation's busiest airports.

Dozens of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, some of whom were themselves stuck in security lines due to staffing shortages from a partial government shutdown, were beginning their first full day of work to probe the crash. Preliminary findings from the plane's data recorders were expected to be released later Tuesday.

The plane sat on the runway, tilted upward, its nose destroyed. The runway was closed indefinitely. The NTSB said Monday there was "a lot of debris" and hazardous material scattered in the vicinity.

The airport was shut down from late Sunday night until 2 p.m. Monday and reopened but with a reduced capacity.

As the lines of hundreds of passengers returned Tuesday, groups of visibly armed agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in tactical vests were roaming the terminal, few if any apparently involved with passenger screening typically done by the Transportation Security Administration.

ICE agents, some from the unit that undertakes deportations, moved in groups, chatting with one another, using their cellphones, watching videos and observing the lines of passengers from an overhead lounge.

ICE agents have been deployed to airports nationwide by President Donald Trump after Congressional Democrats refused to fund ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Democratic leadership is demanding new restrictions on ICE's practices.