BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
A Delta Air Lines plane crashed and flipped upside-down on the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday. All on board escaped the wreck without critical injuries, officials said.
Eighteen people were injured, though none was life-threatening, when Delta Flight 4819 crashed on landing on the snowy tarmac in Canada’s largest city, Toronto’s Pearson Airport Fire Chief Todd Aitken said at a press conference on Monday evening.
Paramedics had previously said that three people were in critical condition, including a child before Aitken shared the update.
All 80 people, including 4 crew members made it off the plane before it burst into flames.
The flight, operated by the airline’s subsidiary Endeavor Air, took off from Minneapolis about 11:47 a.m. and crashed at about 2:15 p.m.
It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to flip but Aitken noted that the runway “was dry and there were no cross-wind conditions.” The mangled airliner was left smoldering on the snowy tarmac as dazed passengers scrambled out.
The Bombardier CRJ-900LR had one wing severely crumpled and the tail section was partially sheared off.
Terrifying video of the wreckage posted by Storyful shows a pair of firefighters jumping out of a side door of the aircraft and sprinting to safety just seconds before a massive fireball erupted from the fuselage.
Paramedics told the BBC they transported the three gravely injured passengers to three different hospitals, including a “pediatric patient,” a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s.
The injured child’s age was not immediately clear, and the identities of the other hurt passengers were not provided.
Airport staff said that the airport had shut down all arrivals and departures in the wake of the crash, CTV news reported.
Dramatic video posted on Facebook by a passenger shows firefighters, paramedics and other emergency personnel frantically making their way across the snow-swept runway to the upside-down plane.
The plane is a Bombardier CRJ-900LR, which can seat up to 88 passengers and four crew members, according to flight records.
The crash followed a weekend winter storm in the area which dumped nearly nine inches of snow on the airport, forcing crews to work overnight Sunday to clear key runways.
This is the first major incident involving a commercial passenger jet since the Jan. 29 crash of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in which 67 passengers and crew were kille
