TORONTO — A Delta Airline Lines flight from Minneapolis flipped upon landing at Pearson Airport in Toronto. Eighty people were on board and all survived.
The plane, a Mitsubishi CRJ-900LR, remained upside down on the tarmac on Tuesday morning, hours after the crash. The fuselage appeared to be intact, but the plane was missing a wing, The Associated Press reported.
Update 12:49 p.m. ET Feb. 18: Officials said injuries of those treated after the crash included back sprains, head injuries, anxiety issues, nausea and vomiting with the latter illnesses likely caused by the leakage of the plane’s fuel.
Update 12:27 p.m. ET Feb. 18: Deborah Flint, president & CEO of Toronto Pearson International Airport said during a Tuesday afternoon news conference that rescue crews conducted a textbook response to the crash.
Flint said 19 passengers were sent to local hospitals immediately after the incident, but two additional went after the crash. Two people, whose identities were not released, are in the hospital. They do not have life-threatening injuries, but no details about their injuries have been released.
She said there was significant snow at the time, more than they had last winter.
Seven members of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada were on site Monday night. More than a dozen arrived on Tuesday. Delta and Mitsubishi also have crews on site as part of the investigation.
Operations at the airport resumed and have been in recovery mode, meaning they are trying to catch up with the flights that were canceled on Monday. Additional weather conditions may impact flight schedules, especially with runways out of service due to the crash.
Update 10:09 a.m. ET Feb. 18: Delta said that 21 people on board the flight were taken to area hospitals and 19 have been released. Initially, it was believed that 18 were transported.
The company sent an incident response team to Toronto to help support customers, employees and family members, the company said on X.
Some Delta and Delta Connection flights have resumed at Pearson Airport, but they are using larger planes to increase passenger capacity.
Original report: The winds at the time of the incident the airport had blowing snow and winds blowing at 32 mph and gusting to 40 mph but communications between the plane and the tower were normal.
There was about five miles of visibility at the time CNN reported.
Officials said that the runway was dry and there were no crosswinds when the plane crashed, the AP reported. The tower did warn pilots of a possible air flow “bump” on approach.
“I guarantee you the weather conditions will be one of the factors, to what extent, we don’t know at this point,” John Nance, an aviation analyst, said, according to WSB.
Nance speculated that it was possible that the plane’s landing gear failed and caused the wing to hit the runway.
“There’s never just one cause to an aviation mishap,” he said.
TMZ released a video that it said shows the plane crashing.
A medical helicopter that had left the airport moments before the crash circled back to help, with the tower telling the pilot “Just so you’re aware, there’s people outside walking around the aircraft there” and the pilot responding “Yeah, we’ve got it. The aircraft is upside down and burning.”
Officials are trying to determine why the right wing was gone.
“If one wing is missing, it’s going to have a tendency to roll over,” John Cox, CEO of Safety Operating Systems told the AP. “Those are going to be central questions as to what happened to the wing and the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. They will be found, if not today, tomorrow, and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada will read them out and they will have a very good understanding of what actually occurred here.”
Cox said that planes coming to rest upside down is unusual.
“We’ve seen a couple of cases of takeoffs where airplanes have ended up inverted, but it’s pretty rare,” he told the AP.
Passengers who were hanging upside down in their seats were able to exit the crashed aircraft and walk across the airfield.
Passenger Peter Carlson said the landing was “very forceful,” the AP reported.
“All the sudden everything just kind of went sideways and then next thing I know it’s kind of a blink and I’m upside down still strapped in,” he told CBC News.
He said he took off the seatbelt and hit the ceiling of the plane beneath him. He said he smelled gas and saw the plane’s fuel pouring down the cabin windows. But despite knowing he needed to get out of the plane, his paramedic skills kicked in as he helped a mother and her son get out of the plane. He then finally left the aircraft.
Pete Koukov told CNN he didn’t know there was an issue until what he said was the “hard landing.”
“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down hanging like bats,” Koukov said.
He recorded his exit from the plane, sharing on Instagram what it looked like inside the aircraft. Warning there is profanity throughout the clip.
Another passenger said it was “amazing that we’re still here.”
“When we hit, it was just a super hard - it hit the ground, and the plane went sideways,” John Nelson told CNN. He said he saw “a big fireball” coming from the left side of the plane.
“Even upside down, people were able to get out in a very expeditious fashion. So, there are a lot of lessons here that are reinforced,” Nance said, according to WSB. “The reengineering of most of the interiors over the past 30 years have proved the point that that’s needed. It’s fire-blocking material. It’s easy access to the outside. It’s all the things we needed for flight attendants to say, ‘Get up. Get out. Get up. Get out.’ Even upside down.”
Of the 76 passengers and four crew members, 18 were taken to area hospitals for treatment.
“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” Greater Toronto Airports Authority CEO, Deborah Flint, said.
Delta Air Lines active its Passenger Inquiry Center for family and friends of those on the flight, WSB reported. The phone number for those in the U.S. is 800-997-5454 and for those in Canada, call 866-629-4775.
“The hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected by today’s incident at Toronto-Pearson International Airport,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said, according to WSB. “I want to express my thanks to the many Delta and Endeavor team members and the first responders on site.”
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is leading the investigation and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to help.
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