Plane flips upside down on landing but all passengers survive

by Mick the Ram

Passengers and crew on board a flight landing at Toronto Pearson Airport in Canada had a remarkable escape when their aircraft crashed and flipped over onto its roof on the runway, losing its right wing and tail in the process.

All 80 people survived with most incredibly able to walk clear, although 18 were injured and reports say three were taken to hospital in a critical condition, including one child.

The cause of the crash is as yet unknown, but there was very bad weather in the area with the city recovering from back-to-back storms, which may have contributed.

Delta Airlines Flight 4819 had taken off from the Minnesota city of Minneapolis less than two hours earlier, with no apparent issues for the 16-year-old Bombardier made CRJ900 aircraft.

An investigation has been immediately launched.

“Textbook” response

The US Federal Aviation Authority said the plane was operated by Delta’s subsidiary Endeavor Air.

Deborah Flint of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said in a hastily arranged press conference: “We are very grateful there was no loss of life”. She called the response by emergency personnel “textbook” before confirming that of the 76 passengers, 22 of them were Canadian and the rest were “multinational”.

Three believed to be critical

Video footage shared on social media shows people clambering out of the overturned aircraft, with fire crews spraying it with foam.

Ontario air ambulance service Ornge said that they transported a man in his sixties to St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and a woman in her forties to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, also in the city.

No news was released regarding a child believed to also be critically injured, other than they were taken to a third hospital.

Hanging upside down

Passenger John Nelson told how there was no indication of anything unusual before landing. “We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” he said. Mr Nelson explained how he was able to unbuckle his seat belt and described falling to the ground, which in reality was in fact the roof.

He went on to then assist some others who he said were: “kind of hanging and needed helping down.”

Runway was dry

Toronto Pearson Airport had been experiencing weather-related delays over the previous days, with heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures battering parts of Ontario.

Two storms in particular – the second one just the night before the crash – covered the city with a total of 30-50 cm of snow.

Nevertheless, Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken was quick to stress: “the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions”.

Safety seats

Dan Ronan, an FAA licensed commercial pilot and aviation expert, was full of praise for the crew and highlighted how flight attendants are not there simply to serve drinks and sandwiches.

They are, he said: “there in an emergency situation, and they’re there to get us off the plane safely.”

Mr. Ronan added: “The survivability of this crash is really the remarkable thing” and pointed out that possibly the seats played a crucial role. He explained that they are called ’16G’ and are “designed to absorb a great deal of punishment.”

Warnings on approach?

The Delta flight was cleared to land, and audio recordings reveal the control tower warning the pilots of a possible air flow ‘bump’ on the approach.

John Cox, CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems in St Petersburg, Florida, said: “It sounds to me like a controller trying to be helpful, meaning the wind is going to give you a bumpy ride coming down, that you’re going to be up and down through the glide path.”

He did stress however that pilots are trained and experienced to handle that such eventualities.

Spate of crashes continues

The US Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada would head up the investigation and provide any updates.

The NTSB in the US said it is leading a team to assist in the Canadian investigation.

The crash is at least the fourth major aviation incident in North America in the past month, including the tragic mid-air collision between a military helicopter and a passenger plane close to Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan airport, that killed 67 people.