Timeline of Toronto Plane Crash: Delta Flight from Minneapolis Flips Over During Landing Attempt

TORONTO,  A Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) regional jet flipped over while landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday during windy conditions following a snowstorm, officials reported. The incident injured 18 of the 80 passengers and crew on board.

According to a Canadian air ambulance official, three individuals on Flight DL4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport sustained critical injuries, including a child. Fifteen others were also transported to hospitals for treatment.

Delta announced late Monday that some of the injured have since been discharged from hospitals.

The U.S. airline stated that a CRJ900 aircraft, operated by its subsidiary Endeavor Air, was involved in a single-aircraft incident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board.

The 16-year-old CRJ900, manufactured by Canada’s Bombardier (BBDb.TO) and equipped with GE Aerospace (GE.N) engines, has a seating capacity of up to 90. Video footage from the scene showed that at least one of the plane’s two wings had detached following the accident.

Canadian authorities confirmed they will investigate the cause of the crash, which remains unknown at this time.

Passenger John Nelson shared a video on Facebook capturing the aftermath, depicting a fire engine dousing the overturned plane with water as it lay on the snow-covered tarmac.

In an interview with CNN, Nelson stated there were no signs of anything unusual prior to landing.

“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” Nelson recounted to the network.

WEATHER CONDITIONS

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, FlightRadar24 data showed.

The reported weather conditions at time of the crash indicated a “gusting crosswind and blowing snow,” the flight tracking website said.

Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken said late on Monday the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions, but several pilots Reuters spoke to who had seen videos of the incident pushed back against this comment.

U.S. aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (22 mph) from the right as it was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would go up and down.

“It’s gusty so they are constantly going to have to be making adjustments in the air speed, adjustments in the vertical profile and adjustments in the lateral profile,” he said of the pilots, adding that “it’s normal for what professional pilots do.”

Investigators would try to figure out why the right wing separated from the plane, Cox said.

Michael J. McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the Toronto crash fairly unique.

“But the fact that 80 people survived an event like this is a testament to the engineering and the technology, the regulatory background that would go into creating a system where somebody can actually survive something that not too long ago would have been fatal,” he said.

Three previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas’s MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport killing both pilots. In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark with no fatalities.

AIRPORT DELAYS
Flights have resumed at Toronto Pearson Airport, but president Deborah Flint warned on Monday evening that operational impacts and delays are expected over the next few days as two runways remain closed for the investigation.

Flint credited the absence of fatalities, in part, to the swift actions of first responders at the airport.

“We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and that injuries were relatively minor,” she said during a press conference.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) announced it is deploying a team of investigators, with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board also sending a team to assist in the probe.

Under global aviation standards, a preliminary investigation report must be published within 30 days of an accident.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T), which acquired the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, stated it is aware of the incident and will fully cooperate with the investigation.

The crash in Canada follows several recent aviation incidents in North America. These include a fatal collision between an Army helicopter and a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, D.C., which killed 67 people, a medical transport plane crash in Philadelphia that claimed at least seven lives, and a passenger plane crash in Alaska that resulted in 10 fatalities.