A day after a Delta Flight 4819 flipped moments after landing in Toronto, what remained of the aircraft remained upside down, its right wing and tail sheared off and the wreckage blocking the two longest runways at Canada’s busiest airport.
But officials on Tuesday were still marveling that all 80 people on board had escaped death or life-threatening injuries after the jet made a hard landing and rolled over, grinding to a halt in a cloud of dense smoke, sparks and flame at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“Every time you board a flight, you are greeted by flight attendants and by flight crew,” Deborah Flint, the president of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “But we saw the most important role that they play in action yesterday. The crew of Delta Flight 4819 heroically led passengers to safety.”
As investigators from safety boards in Canada and the United States, as well as the regional jet’s manufacturer, began combing over the wreckage, there was no official word on what caused the crash.
For the 80 people on board the flight from Minneapolis, the world lurched immediately after the wheels hit the ground on Monday afternoon.
In the blink of an eye, passengers found themselves hanging upside down, still strapped into their seats as jet fuel ran down the windows, said Pete Carlson, one of the passengers.
“The absolute initial feeling is just, ‘Need to get out of this,’” Mr. Carlson told CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster.
But after a horrific string of fatal aviation accidents over the past two months, this crash proved different. The seatbelts that passenger had strapped on to prepare for landing likely contributed to the lack of a more catastrophic outcome, aviation experts said.
Flight attendants and passengers were able to help each other out of the emergency exits and, with the assistance of firefighters, onto the snowy runway.
Delta said that 21 passengers were transported to local hospitals after the crash, as of Monday night. By Tuesday morning, all but two had been released, the airline said.
Cory Tkatch, the commander of operations at the Peel Regional Paramedic Services, said that the injured passengers suffered “back sprains, head injuries, anxiety, some headaches, nausea and vomiting due to the fuel exposure.”
The crew of an air ambulance waiting to take off captured the moment of the crash-landing on film. The video, which spread on social media and was verified by The New York Times, may offer clues about what caused the plane to end up flipped over on its back.
Fox Flight, a Canadian air ambulance company based in Toronto, told The Times that the video had been filmed from one of its aircraft.
The jet, a Bombardier CRJ900 operated by a Delta subsidiary, Endeavor Air, was landing at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time after a seemingly normal flight along the busy route between Minneapolis and Toronto.
“The second that the wheels hit the ground, then everything happened,” said Pete Koukov, a professional skier from Colorado who was on the flight, in an interview on Monday night. “The next thing I know, we’re sideways.”
The plane skidded on its right side, said Mr. Koukov, who was sitting at a window seat on the other side of the plane. He saw sparks and flames as the plane hit the ground.
When the plane came to a stop belly-up, he unbuckled and lowered himself down to the ceiling of the aircraft, which was now its floor, Mr. Koukov said. “People were panicking.”
A video taken by Mr. Koukov shows a flight attendant helping passengers climb out of the plane, urging them to hurry and to leave their belongings behind.
Other videos from the scene showed flames and black smoke billowing from the plane as firefighters hosed it down. Photos taken after the crash showed most of the right wing of the jet shorn off, and the left wing damaged with the left landing gear still attached to the plane.
In the aftermath of the crash, an air traffic controller told a medical helicopter pilot who offered to help: “There are people outside walking around the aircraft there.”
“Yeah, we’ve got it. The aircraft is upside down and burning,” the helicopter pilot responded, according to LiveATC audio.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead the investigation into the crash, officials have said, and the National Transportation Safety Board has said it was leading a team of American investigators to assist the Canadian authorities. They have been joined by representatives from Mitsubishi, which purchased the CRJ line of aircraft from Bombardier and then stopped production.
The crash is likely to create aviation chaos for days to come. Toronto Pearson, Canada’s largest and busiest airport, was already juggling a slew of delays and cancellations caused by a series of winter storms that dropped 20 inches of snow on the airport, more than it received during all of last winter. .
Ms. Flint, the airport’s president, said that the wreck will likely remain on the runway for 48 hours. She said that on Monday 462 flights were canceled following the crash.
Ms. Flint and the airport’s fire chief both declined to discuss possible causes of the crash, citing the investigation.
But the government’s weather service said that gusts of up to 38 miles an hour were coming from the west as the plane was landing. There was also drifting snow in the Toronto area, which was struck by two snowstorms in the past few days.
While Ms. Flint did not comment on the weather as a possible cause, she did say that all decisions to close the airport because of adverse weather are made between the federal agency that runs air traffic control in Canada and pilots. That agency, NAV Canada, did not immediately respond to questions about Monday’s conditions.
The jet’s pilots had told passengers during the flight that there were windy conditions, said Mr. Carlson, the paramedic who was on board. But he and others were still unprepared for the jolt when it came. “It was cement and metal,” he said.
The fact that the passengers would have had their seatbelts on for the landing, as required under Canadian law, was one of several factors that limited injuries and contributed to a safe evacuation, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and founder of Safety Operating Systems, an aviation consulting firm.
“By the time the airplane comes to a stop, everybody’s belted in, the seats remain attached to the floor and the fuselage stayed together,” he said.
That the exit doors could still be opened underscored the construction quality of the plane, he added. And the ability of the crew to open those doors, even while upside down, and get passengers out quickly, was a testament to their training.
Mr. Carlson, who had a scrape visible on his head, said he saw a woman who had ended up under a seat and a mother and a boy who were sitting on the ceiling of the aircraft. He had no idea what state any of them were in, he said.
“My fatherly instinct and background as a paramedic kind of kicked in,” he said, making him focus on ensuring that they all got off the plane.
Even in those panicky moments, there was a palpable camaraderie as they escaped the plane, he said. “Everyone on that plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another,” he said. “That was powerful.”
Jet fuel was running down the airplane’s windows, Mr. Carlson said. And after leaving the plane, he and others tried to move as far from it as possible once he noticed that a wing was missing and heard sounds of an explosion.
Emerging from the upside-down plane, onto the tarmac and into the blowing snow on Monday, Mr. Carlson said, “it felt like I was stepping onto the tundra.”
“I didn’t care how cold it was,” he said. “I didn’t care how far I had to walk, how long I had to stand. All of us wanted to just be out of the aircraft.”
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