Washington, United States:

US airline Delta will offer $30,000 to each passenger on a plane that crashed as it landed at Toronto airport this week, the carrier told AFP on Wednesday.  “This gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights” of passengers, a company spokesman said. 

On Monday, a Delta Air Lines plane that departed from the US city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, hit the runway hard at Toronto’s main airport and flipped upside down. 

A fireball and thick plumes of black smoke engulfed the plane as it skidded to a halt on its roof but none of the 80 people on board were killed.

Delta said 21 passengers were injured in the accident but only one was still hospitalized as of Wednesday morning. 

Paramedic services said emergency responders dealt with various injuries among the passengers, including back sprains, head injuries, anxiety and headaches.

Dramatic footage of the crash posted on social media and verified by AFP on Tuesday showed the Bombardier CRJ-900 coming in to land before slamming into the runway, then sliding forward in a roll, with its wings sheared off before it stopped on its back.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation, assisted by the US Federal Aviation Administration, Delta and Mitsubishi, which purchased the CRJ line of planes from Bombardier in 2019. 

The Toronto crash was the latest in a recent string of air incidents in North America, including a midair collision between a US Army helicopter and a passenger jet in Washington that killed 67 people, and a medical transport plane crash in Philadelphia that left seven dead.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Toronto:

A Delta Airlines plane, carrying 80 people onboard – including four crew members, crash-landed at the Toronto airport and flipped upside down, leaving at least 18 passengers injured on Monday. No casualties have been reported in the incident, officials said. The incident took place when the Endeavor Air flight, from Minneapolis in the US, was landing in Toronto hours after a massive snowstorm had hit the country.

A video on social media shows the plane crash-landing on a snow-covered runway. Within seconds, a huge black smoke can be seen coming from the plane as it flipped upside down. Some dramatic images even showed people stumbling away from the upside-down CRJ-900 plane, shielding their faces from strong gusts of wind and blowing snow.

Someone sends this, I don’t actually know what it is pic.twitter.com/C0miakUdOW

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) February 17, 2025

Fire crews rushed to douse the aircraft with water as smoke wafted from the fuselage and as passengers were still exiting the plane.

All the injured passengers, including one child, have been taken to nearby hospitals either by ambulance or helicopter, officials said.

“The incident did not involve any other planes. Emergency crews were heroic in their response by reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers. Some of the passengers have already been reunited with their friends and their families,” Toronto Airport Authority chief executive Deborah Flint said.

The cause of the accident is not yet clear.

The Toronto airport suspended all flights for at least two hours after the incident. While the flight operations have now resumed, the airport authority has said that the passengers are likely to witness long delays today.

Delta airlines’ statement

Delta Airlines in a statement said that the CRJ-900 aircraft was involved in a single-aircraft accident at Toronto Pearson International Airport, adding that their primary focus is to take care of those impacted in the incident.

“Delta has activated its Passenger Inquiry Center for family and loved ones of customers involved in today’s accident so they can connect with Delta for more information. In Canada, these individuals may reach out via 1-866-629-4775. In the United States, they may connect using 1-800-997-5454,” it said.

The airline cancelled its flights to and from the airport for the rest of the day. “Delta is working to connect with customers whose flights have been impacted. Customers should also monitor the status of their flight via the Fly Delta app,” it said.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian also expressed grief over the incident saying, “The hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected by today’s incident at Toronto-Pearson International Airport.”

“I want to express my thanks to the many Delta and Endeavor team members and the first responders on site. We are working to confirm the details and will share the most current information as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime, please take care and stay safe,” he said.

The incident took place a day after a massive snowstorm hit eastern Canada on Sunday. Strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures could still be felt in Toronto on Monday when airlines added flights to make up for weekend cancellations due to the storm. “The snow has stopped coming down, but frigid temperatures and high winds are moving in…We are expecting a busy day in our terminals with over 130,000 travellers on board around 1,000 flights,” the Toronto airport had warned.

Toronto:

At least 18 people were injured after a Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm. There were 80 people aboard the US carrier’s flight that originated at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Authorities said three people on the flight, including a child, suffered critical injuries. There is no report of any casualty so far. 

Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.

Caught On Camera

A passenger named Pete Koukov posted a video on Instagram of his rescue by authorities from inside the plane after it crashed. The footage shows passengers being evacuated from an upside-down aircraft as a fire engine sprayed water on it from outside.

Footage captured by another survivor of the accident is also doing rounds on social media showing a female passenger suspended upside down in her seat after the plane had overturned.

“My plane crashed I’m upside down,” she wrote alongside the recording.

The video then showed frightened travellers scrambling to exit the aircraft while making their way to safety. “I was just in a plane crash, oh my god,” the distressed passenger remarked.

BREAKING: STUNNED TORONTO PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR SHARES VIDEO OF MOMENT DELTA JET FLIPPED

DELTA AIRLINE WAS THE ONLY US AIRLINE TO RESIST COMPLYING WITH DONALD TRUMP‘S EXECUTIVE ORDER TO END DEI POLICIES

A Delta passenger plane carrying 76 people crashed at Toronto’s Pearson… pic.twitter.com/0jNOXcawyi

— SANTINO (@MichaelSCollura) February 17, 2025

Another passenger John Nelson also 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.

Terrifying footage from John Nelson, a passenger on Delta Flight #DL4819. The plane flipped upside down upon landing in Toronto after a 1.5 hour trip from Minneapolis, MN.

Miraculously, only 8 of 60 passengers are reported injured. The rest have walked off unharmed. pic.twitter.com/P7qbMBj0IQ

— Jordan Rhone (@JordanRhone) February 17, 2025

He later told CNN there was no indication of anything unusual before landing.

“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” Nelson told the television network.

“I 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,” he said.

Chronology Of The Crash 

Earlier on Monday, Pearson Airport said 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 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of Runway 23 and Runway 15, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

“The aircraft is upside down and burning,” an emergency worker told the air traffic control tower after a controller noted that some passengers were walking near the crashed plane, according to a recording of the incident posted on liveatc.net.

Deborah Flint, president of the Toronto airport, attributed the absence of fatalities in part to the work of first responders at the airport.

“We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” she said at a press conference.

Michael J. McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the crash fairly unique.

“But 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,” he said.

Airport Delays

Delta, in a statement, 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. The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people.

All 18 of the people injured were passengers and were taken to area hospitals, Delta said in a statement.

Of those injured, two were airlifted to trauma centres, and a child was transported to a children’s hospital, said Supervisor Lawrence Saindon of Peel Regional Paramedic Services.

The Toronto airport was shut down for more than two hours before departures and arrivals resumed. This led to ground delays and diversions to other airports including Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, which said it was preparing to receive several diverted flights that might cause further delays.

Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays at Toronto Airport over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, said it was aware of the incident and would fully cooperate with the investigation.

The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, 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.