A PLANE carrying 80 people crash landed at Toronto Pearson airport yesterday, 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 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. Twelve others sustained minor injuries.
Flight 4819 – operated by the Delta subsidiary Endeavor Air – crashed while landing in Toronto at about 2.45pm local time (7.45pm GMT).
The US Federal Aviation Authority said all 80 people onboard had been evacuated, The Guardian reported.
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.”
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 said it was “deploying a team to investigate” the accident, which came weeks after two fatal crashes in the US, Agence France-Presse and Reuters reported. – February 18, 2025
