Federal safety regulators are examining a ground-vehicle collision at Newark Liberty International Airport that sent 13 workers to the hospital and raised questions about the shuttle operator's safety record.
Thirteen airport workers were injured at 3 a.m. Monday when an employee shuttle bus struck a concrete barrier on the Terminal B Departures Level 3 roadway at Newark Liberty International Airport, drawing the National Transportation Safety Board into a ground-vehicle crash at an airport where the agency usually examines plane crashes.
Of the 13 hurt, three sustained serious injuries and 10 had only minor ones; no one faced life-threatening conditions. Emergency crews transported all 13 to area hospitals for treatment.
Port Authority Police shut the Level 3 departures roadway to clear debris and the wrecked bus. Terminal B departure traffic shifted to Level 2 while crews worked, and air traffic was unaffected.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has not announced what caused the bus to hit the barrier, and its investigation is continuing. Daily Voice identified the vehicle as a United Airlines employee shuttle; Port Authority-attributed reports described it only as an employee shuttle transporting airport workers.
The 3 a.m. crash occurred during a shift-change window when employee shuttles move overnight workers to and from the airport, a time when the departures level carries almost no passenger vehicle traffic.
Florida Carrier Runs Newark's Employee Shuttles
Academy Bus LLC, a Fort Lauderdale-based passenger carrier, operated the vehicle. The company runs employee shuttles and long-term parking buses at Newark as a partner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, according to its website, and also supplements AirTrain service during the replacement project. It maintains a Newark Airport office at 620 Division Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and runs interstate passenger service under MC number 646780.
Academy holds USDOT number 1771456 and a Satisfactory federal safety rating as of late November 2025, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records show. The carrier operates 451 power units and employs 511 drivers. Vehicle inspections during the 24 months before the crash found one out-of-service violation out of 370 inspections, a 0.3 percent rate well below the 22.26 percent national average. In that same period Academy reported 13 crashes to the federal government: one fatal, five with injuries and seven that required towing.
The one fatal crash in Academy's 24-month federal record is not detailed in publicly available documents.
Academy operates employee shuttles at Newark during a period of heavy construction. The Port Authority's $3.5 billion AirTrain replacement project, which broke ground in October 2025, has suspended weekday AirTrain runs from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. That suspension has forced thousands of airport employees who once relied on the train for their commute onto shuttle buses during weekday mornings. Those added riders hit a roadway network already handling the $121 million Runway 4L-22R rehabilitation that began in March 2025 and has continued with periodic nightly weekday closures, according to Newark Liberty International Airport alerts. The Port Authority has not linked either project to the crash.
NTSB Sent Highway Investigators to Examine a Bus Crash
The NTSB is dispatching investigators to examine the crash, Daily Voice and ABC7 New York reported.
The NTSB is best known for plane crashes, not bus accidents, and its presence on a departures roadway is unusual.
Federal law gives the NTSB authority over five transportation modes — aviation, highway, railroad, marine and pipeline — under 49 U.S.C. § 1111. The agency has no regulatory power; it investigates accidents across all five modes to find systemic causes and issue safety recommendations. Its highway safety division routinely examines commercial vehicle accidents with significant injury counts or systemic implications.
The Aug. 31 crash falls under the NTSB's highway safety mandate rather than its aviation accident protocols governed by 49 CFR Part 830, which apply only to aircraft incidents. The distinction matters for the investigation because the NTSB's highway investigators will examine driver behavior, vehicle condition and roadway design rather than air traffic control or flight operations. The agency has not said how long its team will remain in New Jersey.
The NTSB's highway team will interview the driver, inspect Academy's maintenance logs and examine whether the Terminal B off-ramp geometry contributed to the crash. The agency has no enforcement power. It can issue safety recommendations to the Port Authority, Academy Bus or federal regulators if it finds systemic risks.
The NTSB and FAA have both opened investigations at Newark this year, a sign of a difficult stretch for the airport. Neither of those prior incidents is connected to the Aug. 31 bus crash. In March an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 and a FedEx cargo plane had a close call on intersecting runways, an incident both agencies are examining, according to KOMO News/Associated Press. In May a United Airlines Boeing 767 snagged a light standard on the highway below while lining up for Runway 29, damaging a tractor-trailer and sending the truck driver to the hospital with minor injuries, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Terminal B Has Seen This Kind of Crash Before
In May 2019 a bus struck a concrete divider on a Terminal B access ramp, injuring 17 people, according to Insurance Journal.
The Port Authority has not publicly disclosed whether it modified the ramp or barrier after the 2019 incident, according to a review of Port Authority press releases and engineering advisories.
Newark Airport had separately announced temporary roadway modifications from Aug. 28 through Sept. 11, 2026. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's weekly travel advisory warned that equipment moves on Monday, Aug. 31, could trigger brief traffic pauses between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. as part of the ongoing runway rehabilitation, though the crash occurred three hours before that window opened and the two events share a date but no causal link.
The Port Authority and NTSB investigations into the Aug. 31 crash are ongoing. The Port Authority Police Department ticketed the driver without specifying the violation, leaving what the driver did wrong still unresolved as both agencies examine the crash and the concrete barrier that stopped the bus.
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Sources
• ABC7 New York, "13 people injured, 3 seriously, after airport shuttle bus hits wall at Newark Airport," ABC7 New York (August 31, 2026)
• Academy Bus LLC, Press Release (February 16, 2026)
• Code of Federal Regulations, 49 CFR Part 830, "Notification and Reporting of Aircraft Accidents or Incidents" (current as of August 31, 2026)
• Daily Voice, "NTSB Investigating Newark Airport Shuttle Bus Crash That Injured 13," Daily Voice (August 31, 2026)
• Federal Aviation Administration, "FAA Statements on Aviation Accidents and Incidents" (2026)
• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, SAFER Web, Academy Bus LLC, USDOT 1771456 (accessed August 31, 2026)
• Insurance Journal, "Employee Shuttle Bus Crashes at Newark Airport, 17 Injured," Insurance Journal (May 6, 2019)
• KOMO News/Associated Press, "Federal investigators probe Newark close call between Alaska, FedEx Boeing planes," KOMO News/Associated Press (March 20, 2026)
• National Transportation Safety Board, X, "NTSB is sending a team to New Jersey to conduct a safety investigation into Monday's crash at Newark Liberty International Airport involving an employee shuttle bus that struck a concrete wall at terminal B." (August 31, 2026)
• Newark Liberty International Airport, "Airport Roadway Modifications" (August 2026)
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, "AirTrain Newark Replacement Project" (October 2025)
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, "Weekly Travel Advisory for Aug. 28 to Sept. 3" (August 28, 2026)
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, press releases and engineering advisories (reviewed for 2019 modifications)
• U.S. Code, 49 U.S.C. § 1111