TORONTO: A Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.
Three people on the flight that originated at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, authorities added.
U.S. carrier Delta 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.
Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was 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,” he said.
Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.
The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.
“The aircraft is upside down and burning,” an emergency worker told the air traffic control tower after a controller noted that some passengers were walking near the crashed plane, according to a recording of the incident posted on liveatc.net.
Deborah Flint, president of the Toronto airport, attributed to 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 relatively minor injuries,” she said at a press conference.
Michael J. McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the crash fairly unique.
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“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.
Airport delays
All 18 of the people injured were passengers and were taken to area hospitals, Delta said in a statement.
Of those injured, two were airlifted to trauma centers, and a child was transported to a children’s hospital, said Supervisor Lawrence Saindon of Peel Regional Paramedic Services.
The Toronto airport was shut down for more than two hours before departures and arrivals resumed.
This led to ground delays and diversions to other airports including Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, which said it was preparing to receive several diverted flights that might cause further delays.
Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays at Toronto airport over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, said it was aware of the incident and would fully cooperate with the investigation.
The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.
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