At least one of the plane\u2019s two wings was no longer attached to it, video of incident shows after accident
\n Toronto
\nA Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada\u2019s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.
\nThree people on flight DL4819 from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, a Canadian air ambulance official said, with 15 others also immediately taken to hospitals.
\nSome of the injured have since been released, Delta said late on Monday.
\nThe US carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board.
\nThe 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada\u2019s Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people. At least one of the two wings was no longer attached to the plane, video showed after the accident.
\nCanadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.
\nPassenger John Nelson posted a video of the aftermath on Facebook, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.
\nHe later told CNN there was no indication of anything unusual before landing.
\n\u201cWe hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,\u201d Nelson told the television network.
\n\u201cI was able to just unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. And then some people were kind of hanging and needed some help being helped down, and others were able to get down on their own,\u201d he said.
\nWeather conditions
\nToronto Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 centimetres of snow at the airport.
\nThe Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13pm after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, FlightRadar24 data showed.
\nThe reported weather conditions at time of the crash indicated a \u201cgusting crosswind and blowing snow,\u201d the flight tracking website said.
\nToronto 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.
\nUS aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (22 miles per hour) from the right as it was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would go up and down.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d he said of the pilots, adding that \u201cit\u2019s normal for what professional pilots do.\u201d
\nInvestigators would try to figure out why the right wing separated from the plane, said Cox.
\nMichael J McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the Toronto crash fairly unique.
\n\u201cBut 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,\u201d he said.
\nThree previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas\u2019s MD-11 model. In 2009, a freighter turned over on landing at Tokyo\u2019s Narita airport killing both pilots. In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another freighter flipped over at Newark with no fatalities.
\nAirport delays
\nFlights have resumed at Toronto Pearson, but airport president Deborah Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.
\nShe attributed the absence of fatalities in part to the work of first responders at the airport.
\n\u201cWe are very grateful that there is no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,\u201d she said at a press conference.
\nThe Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the US National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada\u2019s TSB.
\nGlobal aviation standards require a preliminary investigation report to be published within 30 days of an accident.
\nThe crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, DC, killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least one of the plane\u2019s two wings was no longer attached to it, video of incident shows after accident Toronto A Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada\u2019s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-462423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n