ALL PASSENGERS AND CREW SURVIVE PLANE CRASH AT TORONTO AIRPORT
All passengers and crew on a flight which crashed and overturned while landing at Toronto Pearson Airport in Canada have survived, the airport’s chief executive said.
“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” said Deborah Flint of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.
One child and two adults were critically injured in the crash, according to emergency services. Images shared on social media show a plane flipped over and lying on its roof on the snow-covered tarmac. It appears to be missing at least one wing.
Toronto Pearson Airport said the crash involved a Delta Air Lines flight arriving from Minneapolis, and of the 80 people on board, 76 were passengers and four were crew.
Eighteen passengers were transported to hospital in total.
Ontario air ambulance service Ornge said it had dispatched three air ambulance helicopters and two land ambulances to the scene.
The patients with critical injuries include a child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s, it added.
In an evening briefing, Ms Flint called the response by emergency personnel “textbook” and credited them with helping ensure no loss of life.
The US Federal Aviation Authority said the plane involved was Delta Air Lines Flight 4819, being operated by one of its subsidiaries, Endeavor Air.
Delta confirmed that a CRJ900 aircraft was involved in the incident at about 14:15 ET (19:15 GMT) on Monday afternoon.
Twenty-two passengers are Canadian and the rest are “multinational”, Ms Flint said.
The airport was closed shortly after the incident, but flights into and out of Toronto Pearson resumed at about 17:00 local time, the airport said.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said it was deploying a team to “gather information and assess the occurrence”.
Two runways will remain closed for several days for investigation and passengers have been told to expect some delays.
Toronto Pearson fire chief Todd Aitken said on Monday night that while it was early in the investigation, they could say “the runway was dry and there was no cross-wind conditions”.
That contradicts earlier reports of wind gusts of more than 64km/h (40mph) and a crosswind.
Video footage shared on social media shows people clambering out of the overturned aircraft, with fire crews spraying it with foam. [BBC News]
