A plane carrying 80 people crash landed at Toronto Pearson airport on Monday, flipping upside down and leaving at least 18 people injured.
Video from the scene showed a Delta Air Lines plane belly-up on snow-covered tarmac and people walking away.
Two adults in a critical condition were airlifted to a nearby trauma centre and one child was taken by ambulance to a hospital in downtown Toronto. Fifteen others sustained minor injuries.
Flight 4819 – a Bombardier CRJ900 jet operated by the Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air – crashed while landing in Toronto about 2.45pm local time, having flown from Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota.
The US Federal Aviation Authority said all 80 people onboard had been evacuated.
Video footage posted on Instagram showed passengers being helped by cabin crew to leave the upturned plane, with firefighters hosing the fuselage.
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. Most people appear to be OK. We’re all getting off.”
Nelson 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.
“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.”
Todd Aitken, the airport’s fire chief, said: “It’s very early on. It’s really important that we do not speculate. What we can say is the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions.”
Deborah Flint, Toronto airport authority chief executive, said the crash did not involve any other planes.
The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said he was “relieved there are no casualties”.
All departures and arrivals at the airport resumed at 5pm local time, having been paused minutes after the crash.
A massive snowstorm hit eastern Canada on Sunday, and strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures could still be felt in Toronto yesterday. Before the crash, dozens of departures and arrivals had been delayed.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was “deploying a team to investigate” the accident, which came weeks after four fatal crashes in the US. The US National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Reuters
• This article was amended on 18 February 2025. Fifteen people sustained minor injuries, not 12; and there have been four fatal crashes in the US in recent weeks, not two as stated in an earlier version.
