A Delta Air Lines jet crashed Monday during a fiery landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport, skidding down the tarmac before coming to a stop while flipped upside down.
The dramatic scene, captured on video by air traffic controllers and, later, the passengers on board, left 21 people injured — two critically. What caused it remains under investigation by the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, which said Tuesday that the aircraft’s black boxes have been recovered, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration. Here’s what we know so far.
The ceiling of the plane “had become the floor”
Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 departed Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota on Monday morning, carrying 76 passengers and four crew members.
The plane, operated by Minneapolis-based Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air, struck the landing strip as it arrived at Toronto Airport at about 1:15 p.m. CST, according to Delta. Images and video of the accident showed the CRJ-900 aircraft catch fire when it hit the pavement and proceeded to turn sideways while sliding across the airfield, losing its tail and both wings along the way.
It eventually flipped over and came to a halt. Passengers on the plane have since described hanging upside down, suspended by their fastened seatbelts, with one person recalling how he “crashed down onto the ceiling, which had become the floor” after unbuckling.
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Emergency teams rushed to the site of the crash, extinguishing the blaze and then evacuating the passengers who were still inside. At a news conference Tuesday, Toronto International Airport president and CEO Deborah Flint praised the Delta flight crew and emergency workers at the airport for launching a “textbook response” to the accident “within minutes.”
“The crew of Delta Flight 4819 heroically led passengers to safety, evacuating a jet that had overturned on the runway on landing that was amidst smoke and fire,” Flint said. “Thank you for all that you do every day and every night in service of safe air travel.”
Delta CEO Ed Bastian also commended the flight crew and their swift evacuation, calling the circumstances “horrifying” in an interview Wednesday on “CBS Mornings.”
“You can imagine, when I received the text minutes after it happened, hearing that there was a regional jet upside down on an active runway with 80 people on board, how I felt without knowing yet what was transpiring,” Bastian said. “But the reality is, safety is embedded into our system. … And yes, it’s amazing the work that our team did up at Endeavor, but that’s what we expect out of them because we are prepared for all types of circumstances.”
Two people were critically injured
All 80 passengers and crew members on the Delta flight survived the crash. Emergency responders and the flight crew themselves ushered passengers down the aisle of the overturned jet and helped evacuate them through an emergency exit door. More footage from the crash showed passengers climbing out of the aircraft and stepping out onto a snowy tarmac, where powerful winds whipped past.
Officials originally reported that 19 people suffered injuries in the accident, but the number was revised up to 21 between Monday and Tuesday. Flint said 19 people were taken to hospitals in the area for medical treatment immediately after the crash, and two more were admitted later on. Corey Tkatch, commander of operations for Peel Regional Paramedic Services, said some people suffered back sprains, head injuries, anxiety and “nausea and vomiting due to the fuel exposure.”
Nineteen of the injured people had been released by Tuesday, according to Delta Air Lines, while two remained hospitalized and their conditions were listed as critical. The exact nature of their injuries has not been released, but Flint told reporters the people hurt on Flight 4819 had a range of injuries considered minor to critical, none of which are life-threatening.
Peel Regional Paramedic Services at first classified a child as injured and in critical condition, but the Hospital for Sick Children later said the child was in good condition.
Toronto was experiencing rough and frigid weather
Evacuees from the plane crash were met with harsh wintry conditions when they exited onto the airfield, with one person likening the environment to tundra weather. Snow and ice coated the tarmac, and powerful, blustery winds could be seen on video.
Meteorologists said Toronto was experiencing blowing snow when the accident occurred, and visibility had been reduced to 6 miles. Winds were gusting up to 37 miles per hour and temperatures dropped far below freezing to just 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
But Toronto International Airport Fire Chief Todd Aitken said Monday that the airport runway was dry at the time of the crash, and there were no crosswind conditions as the Delta flight arrived.
Bastian told “CBS Mornings” that the flight crew was an experienced group familiar with Toronto’s intense winter weather.
“All these pilots train for these conditions,” Bastian said. “We train for this continuously.”
Flint on Tuesday said the crash occurred on “an operational day” at the Toronto airport, which canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend as a result of heavy snowfall. By Monday, more than 1,000 flights were scheduled, and they resumed at the airport just about three hours after the accident.
Almost two dozen members of Transportation Safety Board of Canada are leading an investigation into the crash and what may have caused it. The United States National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration will also send people from both U.S. agencies to assist in the probe.
Survivors are waiting for answers
Survivors of the crash are waiting for answers about what happened, how it happened and why. A number of people who were on board Flight 4819 have described chaos as the plane made a hard landing, “went sideways,” and everyone was suddenly upside down “hanging like bats” from their seats.
Matt Cunningham, a passenger on the flight, told CBS News Minnesota he was sitting in a window seat about eight rows behind the exits at the front end of the plane. He remembered the passenger seated beside him helping Cunningham unfasten his seatbelt, then falling into the overhead luggage compartments that were below their heads.
“There was some shouting back and forth, ‘Is somebody opening the doors? We need to get off this plane,'” Cunningham said. “The smell of jet fuel became very strong. We could see jet fuel going over the windows, pooling up. Seeing the videos today of the fireball we landed in, it just seems inconceivable that we weren’t on fire.”
Cunningham said he texted his family once the plane had stopped moving. The text read: “Plane crash, please pray.” About 15 minutes passed before he sent a follow-up message that included photos of the outside of the jet.
“Talking to my dad today, he said those 15 minutes from the time he got that text until he until he got the next one with some photos that I took away from the plane, were 15 tough minutes,” Cunningham said Wednesday on “CBS Mornings.”
Other passengers, like John Nelson, captured video of the charred aircraft’s exterior after climbing outside. Nelson’s recounting of the accident was similar to Cunningham’s. Speaking to CBS News Minnesota, he described the plane making a hard landing before skidding on its side and flipping over.
“There was, like, a big fireball outside the left side of the plane and when we got finished we were upside down, everybody else was there as well,” Nelson said. “We tried to get out of there as quickly as possible.”
Skier and sports influencer Pete Koukov, who was also on the plane, shared a video on Instagram in which he evacuates with help from the flight crew and then looks back on the upside-down aircraft, repeatedly exclaiming “Holy f***!”
