TORONTO (Reuters) -A Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.
Three people on the flight that originated at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, authorities added.
Delta said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew aboard. The CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier, can seat up to 90 people.
Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.
“The aircraft is upside down and burning,” an emergency worker told the air traffic control tower after a controller noted that some passengers were walking near the crashed plane, according to a recording of the incident posted on liveatc.net.
One social media user posted video of the aftermath, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.
“We’re in Toronto. We just landed. Our plane crashed. It’s upside down. The fire department on site. Upside down. Everybody, most people appear to be OK. We’re all getting off. Some smoke going on,” Facebook user John Nelson narrated in the video.
Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.
Of those injured, two were airlifted to trauma centers, and a child was transported to a children’s hospital, said Supervisor Lawrence Saindon of Peel Regional Paramedic Services.
All 18 of the people injured were passengers and were taken to area hospitals, Delta said in a statement.
The Toronto airport was shut down for more than two hours before departures and arrivals resumed. This led to ground delays and diversions to other airports including Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, which said it was preparing to receive several diverted flights that might cause further delays.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, said it was aware of the incident and would fully cooperate with the investigation.
The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet in Washington, killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Additional reporting by David Shepardson, Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward in Washington and Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Chizu Nomiyama and Jamie Freed)
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