A Delta Air Lines jet with 80 people onboard crash-landed Monday at Toronto’s main airport, officials said, flipping upside down and leaving at least 18 people injured but causing no deaths.
Endeavor Air Flight 4819 with 76 passengers and four crew was landing in the afternoon in Canada’s largest metropolis, having flown from Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota, the airline said.
No explanation of the cause of the accident, or how the plane ended up flipped with its wings clipped, has been provided.
“It’s very early on. It’s really important that we do not speculate. What we can say is the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions,” said Todd Aitken, the airport’s fire chief.
He confirmed that 18 people had been injured in the accident, with no fatalities.
Earlier, paramedic services told AFP three people were critically injured — a child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s.
All of the wounded, including those with minor injuries, were taken to area hospitals either by ambulance or helicopter, said the paramedic services’ Lawrence Saindon.
Dramatic images on local broadcasts and shared on social media showed people stumbling away from the upside down CRJ-900 plane, shielding their faces from strong gusts of wind and blowing snow.
Fire crews appeared to douse the aircraft with water as smoke wafted from the fuselage and as passengers were still exiting the plane.
Toronto airport authority chief executive Deborah Flint told a news conference the incident did not involve any other planes.
Emergency crews were “heroic” in their response, she said, “reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers.”
Some of them “have already been reunited with their friends and their families,” she added.
The airport suspended all flights after the incident, before resuming them at around 5:00 pm local time, more than two hours later. It said passengers should expect long delays.
Facebook user John Nelson, who said he was a passenger on the flight, posted a video from the tarmac showing the overturned aircraft and narrated: “Our plane crashed. It’s upside down.”
“Most people appear to be okay. We’re all getting off,” he added.
Delta said the flight operated by its subsidiary Endeavor had been “involved in an incident.”
“Initial reports were that there are no fatalities,” the airline said through a spokesperson’s statement.
“The hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected by today’s incident at Toronto-Pearson International Airport,” Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said.
A massive snow storm hit eastern Canada on Sunday. Strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures could still be felt in Toronto on Monday when airlines added flights to make up for weekend cancellations due to the storm.
“The snow has stopped coming down, but frigid temperatures and high winds are moving in,” the airport warned earlier, adding that it was “expecting a busy day in our terminals with over 130,000 travellers on board around 1,000 flights.”
Federal Transport Minister Anita Anand confirmed there were 80 people on the flight. “I’m closely following the serious incident at the Pearson Airport involving Delta Airlines flight 4819 from Minneapolis,” she posted on X.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was “relieved there are no casualties after the incident.”
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board deployed a team of investigators to the site of the crash.
They will be assisted by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which also sent a team to the scene, according to US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.
The crash comes after other recent air incidents in North America including a mid-air collision between a US Army helicopter and a passenger jet in Washington that killed 67 people, and a medical transport plane crash in Philadelphia that left seven dead.
AFP
