Delta plane flips over while landing in Toronto, injuring 18

Toronto — A Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped over while landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday in windy weather after a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.

Three people on flight DL4819 from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, a Canadian air ambulance official said. A further 15 people were taken to hospitals.

Some of the injured have since been released, Delta said late on Monday.

The US carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board.

The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people. At least one of the two wings was no longer attached to the plane, according to video published after the accident.

The cause of the crash is not yet known.

Passenger John Nelson posted a video of the aftermath on Facebook, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.

He later told CNN there was no indication of anything unusual before landing.

“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” Nelson told the television network.

“I was able to just unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. And then some people were kind of hanging and needed some help being helped down, and others were able to get down on their own.”

Bad weather

Toronto Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and cold temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22cm of snow at the airport.

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, FlightRadar24 data showed.

The reported weather conditions at time of the crash indicated a “gusting crosswind and blowing snow”, the flight tracking website said.

Toronto Pearson fire chief Todd Aitken said late on Monday the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions, but several pilots who had seen videos of the incident disagreed with that comment.

US aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (35km/h) from the right as it was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would vary.

“It’s gusty so they are constantly going to have to be making adjustments in the air speed, adjustments in the vertical profile and adjustments in the lateral profile,” he said of the pilots, adding that “it’s normal for what professional pilots do.”

Investigators would try to figure out why the right wing separated from the plane, Cox said.

Michael McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the Toronto crash unusual.

“But the fact that 80 people survived an event like this is a testament to the engineering and the technology, the regulatory background that would go into creating a system where somebody can actually survive something that not too long ago would have been fatal,” he said.

Three previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas’s MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter overturned on landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport killing both pilots. In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark with no fatalities.

Airport delays

Flights have resumed at Toronto Pearson, but airport president Deborah Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.

She attributed the absence of fatalities in part to the work of first responders at the airport.

“We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and mostly minor injuries,” she said.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the US National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist.

Global aviation standards require a preliminary investigation report to be published within 30 days of an accident.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which bought the CRJ aircraft programme from Bombardier in 2020, said it would fully co-operate with the investigation.

Reuters