A fatal crash at LaGuardia, 34 years ago to the day.

The wreckage of USAir Flight 405 on Monday, March 23, 1992, at LaGuardia Airport. The plane crashed into Flushing Bay the night before.Credit…Ed Bailey/Associated Press

The crash at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday occurred on the same date as what appears to have been the last accident with fatalities at the airport, when a USAir jetliner ran off the runway and into Flushing Bay as it attempted to take off in a snowstorm 34 years ago.

Of the 47 passengers and four crew members aboard, 27 died, including the pilot, and 24 were injured.

Investigators soon began looking at whether the plane had waited too long to take off after being de-iced. The airline said the plane had been de-iced two times before the pilots got clearance for takeoff. The first time was 1 hour and 11 minutes before the flight was cleared to take off — when there was a quarter to a half an inch of ice on the aircraft — and again shortly before it left the gate.

The plane, bound for Cleveland, waited another 30 minutes or so before starting down the runway, and it was not immediately clear why the pilots had not asked to have the plane de-iced again. The National Transportation Safety Board said later that de-icing was effective for only about 11 minutes under the weather conditions that night.

The half-empty flight ended with the plane dangling off the runway and bodies floating in Flushing Bay. Rescue workers had to fight snow, wind and tides as they waded in, looking for survivors and clues as to why the twin turbofan-engine plane had gone down.

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A New York City police boat surveys the wreckage of USAir Flight 405 in Flushing Bay on March 22, 1992.Credit…Peter Morgan/Associated Press

The day after the crash, investigators measured a long skid mark on the runway that they said could have been caused by the wing scraping the surface. The skid mark was 37 feet from the center of the runway, which officials noted was the distance from the fuselage to the tip of that wing.

Some passengers reported that the plane had shuddered in the brief moments when it tried to gain altitude. Witnesses said that the aircraft split into pieces, with a wing and the tail slamming into the ground. The nose and the front section plunged into Flushing Bay. One passenger who swam to safety said that the co-pilot — who had survived — tried to help survivors endure the cold before emergency crews arrived.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the next day that the plane apparently gained altitude for a moment, only to wobble and go down. “The plane tilted to the left and bounced around a lot,” Bart Simon, who was sitting in seat 4F, told The New York Times. “You knew we were in trouble.” He said that he had crawled out of the wreckage and managed to swim about 30 yards to the shore.

Eleven months later, the final report on the crash blamed the ice buildup on the wings, along with human error and confusion in the cockpit. The report, from the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the airline industry had not done enough to train flight crews to compensate for icy conditions. The report also said that changes in regulations imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration had made similar bad-weather incidents less likely.