‘Upside down and burning’: Delta plane flips on landing in Toronto, injuring 18
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Toronto Pearson Airport said earlier on Feb 17 it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures.
PHOTO: JOHN NELSON/FACEBOOK
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TORONTO – A Delta Air Lines plane flipped upside down upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Feb 17 amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board.
Three people on the flight that took off from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, said a Canadian air ambulance official, adding that 15 others were also immediately taken to hospitals.
Some of the injured have since been released, Delta said late on Feb 17.
The US carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft – operated by its Endeavour Air subsidiary – with 76 passengers and four crew members on board was involved in a single-aircraft accident.
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, video after the accident showed.
The Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash.
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 the landing.
“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” he told the television network. “I was able to unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. Some people were kind of hanging and needed some help to get down, while others were able to get down on their own,” he said.
Pearson Airport said earlier on Feb 17 that it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped over 22cm of snow at the airport.
The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2.13pm local time (3.13am Singapore time on Feb 18) after an 86-minute flight, FlightRadar24 data showed.
The reported weather conditions at the 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 Feb 17 that the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions. But several pilots Reuters spoke to who had seen videos of the incident pushed back against this comment.
US aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (35.4kmh) from the right as the plane was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would go up and down.
“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 added, noting that “it’s normal for what professional pilots do”.
Associate Professor Michael McCormick, an expert in air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the crash fairly unique.
“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 added.
Three previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas’ MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport, killing both pilots.
In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted in 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 Airport, but its president Deborah Flint said on Feb 17 there would be 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. “We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” she said at a press conference.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the US National Transportation Safety Board said an investigation team would assist TSB.
Global aviation standards require a preliminary investigation report to be published within 30 days of an accident.
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft programme from Bombardier in 2020, said it is aware of the incident and will fully cooperate with the investigation.
The crash in Canada came in the wake of recent tragedies in North America.
An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet
