
How Did a Jet Flip Upside Down on a Toronto Runway and Everyone Survive?
Investigators are probing the causes of an unusual plane crash at Canada's largest airport on Monday, when a regional jet flipped upside down upon landing during windy weather, sending 21 of the 80 people on board to hospital.
Video shows the Delta Air Lines plane belly up and missing its right wing at Toronto's Pearson Airport, and of the crash that involved no fatalities, circulated widely on social media. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said on Tuesday that parts of the plane -- a Bombardier-made CRJ900 -- separated after impact and the fuselage came to rest slightly off the right side of the runway, upside down, facing the other direction.
The TSB said it is too early to know what happened and why. Here is what we know about this accident and similar crashes.
HOW DOES A PLANE LAND UPSIDE DOWN?
US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said aircraft are normally designed to land first on the two main landing gear, and then the nose gear. While the cause of the accident is unclear, the type of impact on the runway likely damaged the landing gear, leaving the plane imbalanced.
Brickhouse said that the plane ending up pointing in the opposite direction speaks to the amount of force and speed that led it to change direction.
"With all the forces and everything going on, if that wing is not there to support the aircraft it's going to go over," Brickhouse said. "It's not something that we see regularly, but when structures start failing, they can't do their job and the aircraft is going to react to the different forces on it."
HOW DID EVERYONE SURVIVE?
Passengers say they were hanging upside down in their seats after the crash.
"All of the passengers were wearing the safety belts. This prevented more serious injuries from occurring," said Mitchell Fox, director of the Asia Pacific Center for Aviation Safety.
Airplane seats are designed to withstand the force of 16 times the normal pull of gravity, or 16Gs, in a crash, whereas wings and fuselage are designed to handle 3-5Gs.
"In an impact-survivable crash, it's more important for the seats to hold up, giving passengers the best chance of survival," said Raj Ladani, a program manager for aerospace engineering at Australia's RMIT University. Good evacuation is key to air accident survivability, as witnessed last year when all 379 people escaped a burning Japan Airlines plane after a runway collision.
"The crew did a remarkable job of evacuating all of the passengers expeditiously," Fox said of the Delta crash.
HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?
While rare, there have been cases of large jets flipping over on landing, including three accidents involving McDonnell Douglas' MD-11 model.
In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing in windy conditions on the runway at Tokyo's Narita airport, killing both pilots. The left wing was broken and separated from the fuselage attaching point and the airplane caught fire.
In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong while landing during a typhoon. The plane touched down hard, flipped over and caught fire, killing three of 315 occupants.
In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark in the United States, with no fatalities.
Brickhouse said it is too early to draw any conclusions from these earlier cases, especially as the MD-11 is a three-engine aircraft and the CRJ900 has two engines mounted toward the back of the aircraft, producing different flight dynamics.
HOW WILL THE INVESTIGATION PROCEED?
Unlike other investigations in which parts of the plane have gone missing, and there are mass fatalities, investigators will be able to interview all 76 passengers and four crew.
Investigators have access to the fuselage and wing, which are on the runway, and the black boxes -- the flight data and cockpit voice recorders -- have been sent for analysis.
"This is going to be a textbook investigation," Brickhouse said. "Some accidents, a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are missing. But right now looking at this accident, all the puzzle pieces are there. It's just you piecing them back together at this point."
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Arab News
21-02-2025
- Arab News
Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash
CONCORD: Sad. Happy. Anguished. Guilty. Denise Lockie of Charlotte, North Carolina, has felt all of the above in recent weeks, as a string of major aviation accidents brought back memories of crash-landing in an icy river in New York. Sixteen years after the 'Miracle on the Hudson,' she and other aviation disaster survivors stand ready to support those who are just emerging from their ordeal in Toronto on Monday. 'Right now, they haven't even processed what has happened,' Lockie said of the 80 passengers and crew members who survived when Delta Air Lines flight 4819 crashed and flipped over at Pearson International Airport. There were no survivors when a commercial jetliner and an Army helicopter collided in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, a medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on Jan. 31 and a plane carrying 10 people crashed in Alaska on Feb. 6. But in Toronto, not only did no one die, the last of the injured were released from the hospital Thursday. 'It's amazing,' said passenger Peter Carlson, who spoke at a conference less than 48 hours after the crash. Though he managed to crack a joke — 'Nothing beats a good road trip besides an airplane crash' — he later admitted struggling to leave his hotel room. 'I was quite emotional about this whole thing and just really want to be home,' said Carlson, the newest member of what retired flight attendant Sandy Purl calls a 'sad sorority and fraternity.' A history of survival Monday's crash in Toronto wasn't the first time lives were spared during a major aviation disaster there: In 2005, all 309 people on board Air France Flight 358 survived after it overran the runway and burst into flames. In 1989, 184 of the 296 people aboard United Airlines Flight 232 survived a crash in Sioux City, Iowa. And in 1977, Purl was one of 22 survivors when Southern Airways Flight 242 lost both engines in a hailstorm and crashed in New Hope, Georgia. Sixty-three people aboard the plane died, along with nine on the ground. 'Immediately you have a euphoria because you survived,' said Purl, now 72. 'But then you go into what's known as psychic numbing, which protects you from everything that's in your brain that you can't bring to the surface for a long time down the road, if ever.' For more than a year after the crash, Purl's strategy was to flee whenever anyone mentioned the disaster. Eventually she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she told the staff, 'I can't stop crying.' A kindly doctor took her hand and reassured her what she was feeling was real. 'For the first time, a year and a half later, people weren't saying, 'You look so good! Get on with your life, you're so lucky to be alive,'' she said. 'For the first time, someone gave me permission to feel and to cry and to feel safe.' Survivors stick together Both Purl and Lockie are members of the National Air Disaster Alliance, which was created in 1995 to support survivors and victims' families and advocate for safety improvements. In 2009, the group published an open letter to the 155 passengers and crew members of US Airways flight 1549 after Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger famously landed the plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike disabled both engines. 'We are grateful and thankful that all survived, but survivors need time to process and comprehend what it means to be an air crash survivor,' the group wrote, encouraging survivors to rest, retreat, rely on others and reserve their rights to privacy. Paying it forward, Lockie is offering similar advice to those aboard the Toronto flight. She described being in a fog for about eight weeks after her crash, struggling to keep up with her corporate job as her injuries healed and being beset by nightmares and panic attacks. 'Absolutely number one as far as I'm concerned is taking to somebody who can understand,' she said. 'I think Delta is a fantastic airline and I'm sure their care team is fantastic, but then again, how many people on those care teams have actually been involved in an aviation incident?' Friends and family might urge survivors to move on with their lives, she said, but 'it just doesn't work that way.' 'You might have fears that come out later on, and you really have to be able to deal with those,' she said. 'So my recommendation is to take all the help you can possibly take.' It doesn't take much to trigger memories While Lockie said her experience hasn't deterred her from flying often, it has shaped her behavior in other ways. When she enters a store or restaurant, for example, she always checks for the fastest way out. 'You have to be able to calm yourself if there's something that triggers your emotional aptitude,' she said. Purl, who returned to work as a flight attendant four years after the crash, said she can be triggered by the smell of gasoline or seeing news footage of other crashes. 'I look at the TV and I see my crash,' she said. 'I smell it. I taste it. I see the black smoke and I can't get through it. I feel the heat of the fire.' The Toronto survivors may find their experience exacerbates underlying traumas, she said. 'Like the layers of an onion, you pull one back and there's another layer underneath,' she said. Her advice: Live one day at a time, seek out people who offer unconditional love and talk, talk, talk. 'And then find a way to make a difference as a result,' she said.


Asharq Al-Awsat
19-02-2025
- Asharq Al-Awsat
How Did a Jet Flip Upside Down on a Toronto Runway and Everyone Survive?
Investigators are probing the causes of an unusual plane crash at Canada's largest airport on Monday, when a regional jet flipped upside down upon landing during windy weather, sending 21 of the 80 people on board to hospital. Video shows the Delta Air Lines plane belly up and missing its right wing at Toronto's Pearson Airport, and of the crash that involved no fatalities, circulated widely on social media. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said on Tuesday that parts of the plane -- a Bombardier-made CRJ900 -- separated after impact and the fuselage came to rest slightly off the right side of the runway, upside down, facing the other direction. The TSB said it is too early to know what happened and why. Here is what we know about this accident and similar crashes. HOW DOES A PLANE LAND UPSIDE DOWN? US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said aircraft are normally designed to land first on the two main landing gear, and then the nose gear. While the cause of the accident is unclear, the type of impact on the runway likely damaged the landing gear, leaving the plane imbalanced. Brickhouse said that the plane ending up pointing in the opposite direction speaks to the amount of force and speed that led it to change direction. "With all the forces and everything going on, if that wing is not there to support the aircraft it's going to go over," Brickhouse said. "It's not something that we see regularly, but when structures start failing, they can't do their job and the aircraft is going to react to the different forces on it." HOW DID EVERYONE SURVIVE? Passengers say they were hanging upside down in their seats after the crash. "All of the passengers were wearing the safety belts. This prevented more serious injuries from occurring," said Mitchell Fox, director of the Asia Pacific Center for Aviation Safety. Airplane seats are designed to withstand the force of 16 times the normal pull of gravity, or 16Gs, in a crash, whereas wings and fuselage are designed to handle 3-5Gs. "In an impact-survivable crash, it's more important for the seats to hold up, giving passengers the best chance of survival," said Raj Ladani, a program manager for aerospace engineering at Australia's RMIT University. Good evacuation is key to air accident survivability, as witnessed last year when all 379 people escaped a burning Japan Airlines plane after a runway collision. "The crew did a remarkable job of evacuating all of the passengers expeditiously," Fox said of the Delta crash. HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE? While rare, there have been cases of large jets flipping over on landing, including three accidents involving McDonnell Douglas' MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing in windy conditions on the runway at Tokyo's Narita airport, killing both pilots. The left wing was broken and separated from the fuselage attaching point and the airplane caught fire. In 1999, a China Airlines flight inverted at Hong Kong while landing during a typhoon. The plane touched down hard, flipped over and caught fire, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark in the United States, with no fatalities. Brickhouse said it is too early to draw any conclusions from these earlier cases, especially as the MD-11 is a three-engine aircraft and the CRJ900 has two engines mounted toward the back of the aircraft, producing different flight dynamics. HOW WILL THE INVESTIGATION PROCEED? Unlike other investigations in which parts of the plane have gone missing, and there are mass fatalities, investigators will be able to interview all 76 passengers and four crew. Investigators have access to the fuselage and wing, which are on the runway, and the black boxes -- the flight data and cockpit voice recorders -- have been sent for analysis. "This is going to be a textbook investigation," Brickhouse said. "Some accidents, a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are missing. But right now looking at this accident, all the puzzle pieces are there. It's just you piecing them back together at this point."


Arab News
19-02-2025
- Arab News
Delta CEO says flight crew on Toronto plane that crashed was experienced
TORONTO: Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said on Wednesday the flight crew on board the regional jet that flipped upside down upon landing in Toronto earlier this week was experienced. The crew on Delta's Endeavor Air subsidiary in Monday's crash, in which 21 people were injured, was familiar with wintry conditions in Toronto, Bastian told 'CBS Mornings' in an interview. 'There is one level of safety at Delta,' Bastian said. 'All these pilots train for these conditions.' Bastian called the video of the incident 'horrifying' but praised the actions of the flight crew to quickly evacuate the airplane. 'This is what we train for,' Bastian said. 'We train for this continuously.' All of those injured are expected to survive. On Tuesday, investigators said they recovered black boxes for lab analysis. Transportation Safety Board of Canada senior investigator Ken Webster said that following initial impact on the runway at Toronto's Pearson Airport, parts of the CRJ900 aircraft separated and a fire ensued. Bastian said despite several high-profile incidents, air travel remains safe. 'It is the safest form of transportation, period,' Bastian said. Webster echoed other aviation safety officials saying it was too early to tell what happened to Flight 4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul. Air crashes are usually caused by multiple factors. In a separate video showing the plane's descent, the landing appeared flat and did not show the regular 'flare' of the jet, where pilots pull the nose up to increase pitch just prior to touchdown, experts said. The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada's Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people. Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to rebound after a major weekend snowstorm. Separately, Bastian said he had spoken to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and was not concerned by the layoff of several hundred employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, saying they were in 'non-critical safety functions.' Bastian said the Trump administration was committed to boosting air traffic controller hiring and improving air traffic technology.