Toronto Pearson Airport said earlier on February 17 it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures.

‘Upside down and burning’: Delta plane flips on landing in Toronto, injuring 18

TORONTO (The Straits Times/ANN) -- A Delta Air Lines flight flipped upside down upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on February 17 amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board.
Three people on the flight that originated at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, a Canadian air ambulance official said, with 15 others also immediately taken to hospitals.
Some of the injured have since been released, Delta said late on February 17.
The US carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavour 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.
At least one of the two wings was no longer attached to the plane, video showed after the accident.
Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash.
Passenger John Nelson 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.
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,” he 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.
Pearson Airport said earlier on Feb 17 it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped over 22cm of snow at the airport.
The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2.13pm (3.13am on Feb 18 Singapore time) after an 86-minute flight, FlightRadar24 data showed.
The reported weather conditions at the time of the crash indicated a “gusting crosswind and blowing snow”, the flight tracking website said.
Toronto Pearson fire chief Todd Aitken said late on Feb 17 that the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions. But several pilots Reuters spoke to who had seen videos of the incident pushed back against this comment.
US aviation safety expert and pilot John Cox said there was an average crosswind of 19 knots (35.4kmh) from the right as the plane was landing, but he noted this was an average, and gusts would go up and down.
“It’s gusty so they are constantly going to have to be making adjustments in the air speed, adjustments in the vertical profile and adjustments in the lateral profile,” he added, noting that “it’s normal for what professional pilots do”.
Associate Professor Michael McCormick, an expert 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 added.

(Latest Update February 19, 2025)