A Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis narrowly avoided tragedy on Monday afternoon after a dramatic crash-landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport, leaving the plane overturned and injuring 18 passengers out of 80 aboard.
Delta Flight 4819, a CRJ900 aircraft operated by Endeavor Air, was cleared to land as snow and strong winds battered the airport. However, moments after approaching the runway, the plane descended heavily, its rear landing gear buckling upon impact. The right wing soon sheared away in a fireball, and the fuselage rolled over, leaving the aircraft belly-up on the slick tarmac.
Surprisingly, all 80 passengers and crew members aboard survived, though 18 people sustained injuries, including a child, who was later reported to be in stable condition.
“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” the CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, Deborah Flint, said in a statement to reporters.
Footage obtained by CNN shows the harrowing moments after the crash, with fire crews rushing to the scene to extinguish flames engulfing the aircraft. Passengers, strapped into their seats, found themselves suspended upside down as the plane skidded along the runway.
Passenger John Nelson recalled the chaos: “When we got finished, I was upside down, everybody else was there as well. We tried to get out of there as quickly as possible,” he said. Nelson, along with fellow passengers, managed to unbuckle and escape the plane, but a subsequent explosion rattled the scene. “Luckily the firefighters got out of there,” he added.
Fellow passenger Peter Koukov described the disorienting aftermath: “We were upside down, hanging like bats,” he said. He managed to unbuckle and stand on the plane’s ceiling while others needed assistance to get down. Koukov, like many, was shaken by the ordeal. “It was cement and metal. The initial feeling was just needing to get out of this,” he explained.
In the midst of the panic, passengers banded together to help one another. “What I saw was everyone on that plane suddenly became very close, in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another,” said Peter Carlson, another passenger. “That was powerful, but there was definite: ‘What now? Who is leading? How do we find ourselves away from this?’”
Firefighters rushed to the scene, dousing the wreckage with fire retardant foam as first responders helped evacuees jump from the overturned plane. The dramatic images of passengers fleeing the aircraft in the cold winds of Toronto made it clear that despite the chaos, survival was the priority.
The crash, which temporarily shut down all five runways at Toronto Pearson and forced numerous flight diversions, has raised concerns about aviation safety, coming on the heels of a string of recent aviation accidents across North America.
Canadian and American investigators said they were working together to determine the cause of the crash. Meanwhile, Toronto’s airport is continuing to recover from the disruption caused by the crash.
