Fifteen injured after plane crashes and flips on landing in Toronto
A plane carrying 80 people has crash landed at Toronto Pearson airport, flipping upside down and leaving 15 people injured.
Video posted by News 3 Now showed a Delta Air Lines plane belly-up on snow-covered tarmac, with people walking away from the plane.
Two people in a critical condition were airlifted to a nearby trauma centre and one child was taken by ambulance to a hospital in downtown Toronto, Peel regional paramedic services supervisor Lawrence Saindon said after the crash on Monday.
Saindon added that 12 others sustained minor injuries.
Flight 4819 – operated by Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air – crashed while landing in Toronto at around 2:45pm local time on Monday.
All 80 people on board were evacuated, CBS News reported.
The airport, which is the largest in Canada, said it was aware of an incident involving a Delta Air Lines plane arriving from Minneapolis and that emergency teams were responding. All passengers and crew were accounted for, the airport said in a statement on X.
A Facebook user who said he was a passenger on the flight, John Nelson, posted a video showing the crashed plane and wrote: “Our plane crashed. It’s upside down.”
He added: “Most people appear to be okay. We’re all getting off.”
The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said all 80 people onboard Delta Flight 4819 had been evacuated. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead an investigation into the incident, the FAA said.
The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said he was “relieved there are no casualties after the incident at Toronto Pearson”, adding that airport and local authorities were providing help.
A massive snowstorm hit eastern Canada on Sunday. Strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures could still be felt in Toronto on Monday.
Constable Sarah Patten, of the Peel regional police in Ontario, told Reuters: “It is my understanding that most of the passengers are out and unharmed but we’re still trying to make sure so we’re still on scene investigating.
The police constable added “we don’t know the circumstances surrounding” the incident at the moment.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said it is “deploying a team to investigate” the accident.
Prior to the crash, dozens of departures and arrivals at the airport had been delayed due to bad weather.
The crash in Canada comes weeks after recent crashes in North America in late January. An Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet in Washington during a training mission, killing 67 people.
At least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia.
