Delta plane flips upside down upon arrival in Canada, all 80 on board survive

A Delta Air Lines jet carrying 80 people has flipped upside down upon landing at one of the busiest airports in Canada, injuring at least 18 people but causing no deaths.

The plane carrying 76 passengers and four crew turned over onto its roof as it landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport at about 3:30pm (20:30 GMT) on Monday.

Deborah Flint, the CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said there had been no loss of life and those on board had suffered only “relatively minor injuries”.

“17 injured passengers were taken to local area hospitals. At this time, we do not know of any of those passengers having critical injuries,” Flint told reporters at a news conference.

“No airport CEO wants to have these types of press conferences but this is exactly what our emergency, our operations and our first responders are all practised and trained for,” Flint added.

“And again, this outcome is in due part to their heroic work and I thank them profusely.”

Toronto Pearson International Airport said in a later update that an 18th passenger had been transported to hospital after the others.

Ornge, an air ambulance service in the province of Ontario, said earlier on Monday that a child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s had all been transported to hospital with critical injuries.

The reason for the differing accounts of the patients’ condition was not immediately clear.

Footage shared on social media showed passengers exiting the upside-down CRJ-900 plane, which had been travelling from Minneapolis in the United States, while shielding their faces from strong wind and falling snow.

“We just landed. Our plane crashed. It’s upside down,” one passenger, identified as John Nelson, explained on a cellphone video he recorded and posted as he walked away from the upturned aircraft. “Most people appear to be OK.”

While authorities have not provided a cause for the crash, the botched landing came as Toronto was reeling from back-to-back winter storms.

Over the weekend, an estimated 22cm (8.7 inches) of snow blanketed the airport, in addition to snowfall from the week before.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the Peel Regional Police in Ontario said they were investigating the circumstances surrounding the crash.

The US National Transportation Safety Board said a team of its investigators would also assist the investigation.

The Association of Flight Attendants urged the public against speculating about the cause of the incident while “everyone works to gather information and support those involved”.

The crash is the fourth aviation accident to occur in North America in less than a month, the most serious of which – a midair collision between a commercial jetliner and a US Army helicopter near Washington, DC – killed 67 people.

The incident also comes as the US aviation sector is reeling from mass layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has maintained that thinning the federal government workforce is necessary to reduce spending and peel back waste.

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union of air traffic control employees, has warned that the “draconian” job cuts will increase the workload of a workforce that is “already stretched thin”.

[Aljazeera]