18 people injured after Delta plane landing at Toronto airport overturns
At least 18 people were injured Monday when a Delta Air Lines plane overturned upon landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
There were no fatalities and the injuries were relatively minor, officials said Monday evening.
Video posted on social media and broadcast from the airport showed a surreal scene — the plane flipped completely upside down as emergency workers evacuated passengers and attended to the crash site.
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“We just landed. Our plane crashed. It’s upside down,” John Nelson, who recorded the video, said as he walked away from the plane. He said that “most people appear to be OK” and that passengers were getting off of the plane.
Toronto Pearson CEO Deborah Flint said that of those injured, none were in critical condition.
Earlier Monday, Lawrence Saindon, a superintendent for Peel Regional Paramedic Services, said 12 people were taken by ground for medical attention.
He said two others were were airlifted to a nearby trauma center.
One of those was reported to be a man in his 60s who was being taken to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, according to Joshua McNamara, corporate communications lead with Toronto Air Ambulance. The other was a woman in her 40s, who was being taken to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
Saindon also said an ambulance took a child to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that Delta Air Lines Flight 4819, which was operated by Endeavor Air and was arriving from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, crashed on landing in Toronto around 2:15 p.m. Endeavor is a “wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines headquartered in Minneapolis,” Delta said.
Eighty people were on the plane, a CRJ-900, the FAA said. There were 76 passengers and four crew members on board, Delta said.
Flint said 22 passengers were Canadian and the rest were “multinational.”
Toronto Pearson is under a ground delay “due to an aircraft emergency,” according to the National Airspace System Status from the FAA, with an average delay of 292 minutes. An earlier ground stop was lifted when departures and arrivals from the airport resumed about 5 p.m., the airport said.
Delta has canceled all flights into and out of Toronto Pearson scheduled for Monday night and issued travel waivers to its customers, the airline said in a statement.
Snow was blowing at the Toronto airport all day. There was lake effect snow earlier in the day, but no snow was reported or on radars at the time of the accident.
At the time of the crash there were 20 to 30 mph winds, with reported gusts up to 40 mph.
As the passengers were being evacuated, the temperature was 18 degrees, with a windchill temperature of minus 2.
The Association of Flight Attendants union, which posted on social media that it was responding to the event, said some of its crew members were working on the flight.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will investigate, according to the FAA. The TSB confirmed on X that it is deploying a team to investigate.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it will assist the TSB of Canada with the investigation.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that FAA investigators are on their way to Toronto and that he has been in touch with his Canadian counterpart to help with the investigation.
“The hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected by today’s incident at Toronto-Pearson International Airport,”said Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta. “I want to express my thanks to the many Delta and Endeavor team members and the first responders on site.”
