A day after a jetliner flipped moments after landing in Toronto, what was left of the aircraft remained upside down on Tuesday, its right wing and tail sheared off and the wreckage blocking the two longest runways at Canada’s busiest airport.
Officials were still marveling that all 80 people on board Delta Flight 4819 escaped death or life-threatening injuries after the jet made a rough 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. They are expected to look into a range of factors, according to aviation safety experts.
“Everything’s on the table: The wind, the pilot performance, the airplane, all those things will be looked at in detail,” said John Cox, a former airline pilot and founder of Safety Operating Systems, an aviation consulting firm.
The plane approached the runway on Monday in windy conditions that former pilots described as challenging.
For the 80 people on board the flight from Minneapolis, the world lurched immediately after the wheels hit the ground. In the blink of an eye, passengers found themselves hanging upside down, still strapped to 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 then 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 had been transported to local hospitals after the crash. By Tuesday morning, all but two had been released, the airline said.
Dianna Ertl, the mother of one of the passengers, said that her son, Mitch Ertl, 37, had been treated at a hospital and would be returning home to Minnesota on Tuesday. He had been on a business trip.
“My heart sank,” said Ms. Ertl, describing the phone call she got from her son.
Mr. Ertl told her that he had been one of the last people to exit the plane, and that he had needed to break a meal tray table that was blocking him from unbuckling his seatbelt, she said.
“I felt relieved that I was talking to him, that I knew he was walking,” Ms. Ertl said.
The crew of an air ambulance waiting to take off captured the moment of the crash-landing on video. 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.
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