A Delta Airlines jet carrying 80 people, including 76 passengers and four crew members, crashed, burnt, flipped and made an upside-down landing at the snowy runway of Toronto’s Pearson Airport on Monday afternoon.
The plane, a Mitsubishi CRJ-900LR, flipped onto its roof while attempting to land at around 3.30 pm (local time) and fortunately all the passengers are safe with only 18 sustained injures.
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A new video emerged on social media showing the Delta flight 4819 flipping on the runway as it landed at Toronto airport.
In the video, the plane was seen crashed landing on a snow-covered runway and then it briefly skids on its belly before flipping over, sending smoke and loose snow shooting into the air.
Passengers recount Delta jet crash in Toronto
Pete Koukov, a passenger, remained unaware of any issues until the aircraft touched down.
“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down hanging like bats,” Koukov explained to CNN’s Brianna Keilar.
The crash footage indicates the absence of the typical landing procedure where pilots raise the nose to increase air resistance against the wings.
“There was no attempt to flare at all, which slows the plane down,” noted CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, who previously served as inspector general at the Department of Transportation.
A medical helicopter pilot reported to air traffic control that the aircraft was “upside down and burning.”
Koukov managed to release his seat belt and exit the aircraft independently, whilst some passengers required assistance to get down from their seats.
“Just feeling lucky and happy I got to give the person I didn’t know sitting next to me a big hug, that we were OK, and see my friends who are here to pick me up from the airport and give them a big hug,” he recounted.
Fellow passenger John Nelson expressed amazement at their survival, stating “it’s amazing that we’re still here.”
“When we hit, it was just a super hard – it hit the ground, and the plane went sideways,” Nelson recounted, noting he observed “a big fireball” from the aircraft’s left side.
He described the evacuation as “mass chaos” as passengers struggled with their seat belts whilst trying to exit.
“We tried to get out of there as quickly as possible,” Nelson said. “Even now I smell like jet fuel.”
A footage captured by a survivor of the accident revealed a female passenger suspended upside down in her seat after the plane had overturned.
“My plane crashed I’m upside down,” she wrote alongside the recording.
The video then showed frightened travellers scrambling to exit the aircraft while making their way to safety. “I was just in a plane crash, oh my god,” the distressed passenger remarked.
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“What we can say is the runway was dry, and there was no crosswind conditions,” Aitken, the airport fire chief said.
Records from the airport tower radio traffic indicate that the Endeavour pilot received information about winds of 26 mph with gusts reaching 38 mph, intersecting the aircraft’s trajectory at a 40-degree angle. At Pearson, the wind was lifting snow into the air, resulting in five-mile visibility.
Les Abend, a retired jet pilot, suggested that weather conditions possibly deteriorated rapidly before the crew could respond.
“With blowing snow, it may have changed rapidly, so the airplane that landed ahead of this aircraft may have had a different condition than this particular Delta regional jet,” Abend told CNN’s Kayla Tausche on Tuesday.
The airport’s CEO announced that two runways at Toronto Pearson will stay closed “into the next several days” during the investigation period.