Latest news with #4819
Forbes
20-03-2025
- General
- Forbes
Preliminary Report On Delta Plane Flip In Toronto Indicates High Wind Gusts And Rapid Descent
Canadian authorities released a preliminary report Thursday finding the crew of Delta Flight 4819 faced several challenges before the plane hard-landed and flipped on a Toronto runway last month, one of a string of recent high-profile aviation accidents that have led to increased public scrutiny on air travel. TSB of Canada senior investigator Ken Webster provided an update from the airfield days after the ... [+] crash. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada released Thursday its preliminary report into the crash of Delta flight 4819, operated by regional carrier Endeavor Air, which flipped and caught fire at Toronto Pearson airport after a hard landing in gusty conditions on Feb. 17. The crash resulted in no fatalities among the 76 passengers and four crew members and, within three days after the crash, all 21 injured passengers initially transported to local hospitals had been released. The report details how the crew faced wind gusts up to 35 knots and landed hard without flaring the nose of the plane up to ease the landing. TSB said preliminary data from the flight data recorder showed the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) sounded an alert 'sink rate' 2.6 seconds before touchdown, indicating a high rate of descent. Delta Air Lines has offered $30,000 to each passenger on board the Mitsubishi CRJ-900 regional jet, for a total of $2.3 million if everyone on board accepts the offer. Delta said in a statement it remains 'fully engaged as participants in the investigation' and will refrain from public comment 'out of respect for the integrity of this work that will continue.' The cause of the crash remains under investigation as Canadian authorities work to determine the exact sequence of events, with a final report not expected for up to a year. Until then, the cause of the crash is undetermined. TSB Chair Yoan Marier said accidents 'rarely stem from a single cause' and instead are often 'the result of multiple complex, interconnected factors.' The TSB's preliminary report details that the first officer was flying the plane at the time of landing and had worked with Endeavor Air, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, for a little more than a year. At the time of the crash, she had accumulated 1,422 hours of total flight time — just under a third of which were on the CRJ plane involved in the crash. Upon touchdown, 'the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire,' according to the report. A brief video summary from the TSB released Thursday said further analysis would be done as authorities examine the certification of wing structure, hard landings and pilot training. 'It seems clear from the preliminary report that the first officer negligently piloted and slammed the plane into the ground at a high sink rate of over 1000 feet per minute and at a bank angle of 7.5 degrees to the right. This likely led to the collapse of the right main landing gear that we all saw on the video of the crash. Our client has suffered significant injuries because of Delta's negligence,' said Andres Pereira of Austin, Texas.-based DJC Law, which represents a passenger now suing the airline. The Montreal Convention 1999 (MC99) governs all international flights between countries that have signed the treaty, including the U.S. and Canada, and establishes airline liability in the case of death or injury to passengers. First Delta Crash Lawsuit Will Be Filed Today, Lawyer Says—After Airline Offers $30,000 To Passengers Over Plane Flip (Forbes)
CNN
01-03-2025
- CNN
Is flying still safe? Here's what experts say
This week's close call at Chicago Midway Airport between a Southwest aircraft and a private jet is the latest in a string of incidents that have many air travelers on edge. In the US alone, it follows the deadly midair collision over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a Medevac jet crash in Philadelphia and a regional airline crash off the coast of Nome, Alaska, that killed 10 people. Recent close calls in February include a Delta flight that made an emergency landing in Atlanta with a haze-filled cabin, and Delta flight 4819 which crash landed, rolled over and ended up resting upside down at Toronto Pearson International Airport in an incident that miraculously claimed no lives. Those events in North America come on the heels of deadly Jeju Air and Azerbaijan Airlines crashes in December 2024 and about a year after an alarming Boeing door panel blowout in the US and a separate fiery runway collision in Japan. And in 2023, a string of near-collisions at US airports spurred the creation of a new independent safety review team. Understandably, anxiety around flying has spiked. So should passengers be concerned? 'I don't know that passengers should be worried, but I think it's important for the flying public to be vocal and demand that the government and the different entities do everything possible to make air travel as safe as possible,' said Anthony Brickhouse, a US-based aviation safety expert. But even accounting for serious accidents, 'statistically speaking, you're safer in your flight than you were driving in your car to the airport,' said Brickhouse, who has decades of experience in aerospace engineering, aviation safety and accident investigation. 'Air travel remains the safest mode of transportation,' he said. Letting investigators do their jobs to find out what went wrong and advise on what needs to be done differently is an essential step after a plane crash, Brickhouse said, speaking to CNN after the DC crash, noting that the US investigative body — the National Transportation Safety Board — does not have regulatory authority. The safety recommendations that stem from NTSB investigations must be accepted and implemented by other agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, and they're not always adopted or can take years to implement. 'So that gap definitely needs to be closed,' Brickhouse said. While it's too soon to know precisely what factors contributed to the DC tragedy, Brickhouse said he has seen a troubling trend. 'When I first got the news, I'll tell you, I was obviously saddened, but I wasn't shocked,' he said, pointing to the string of near-collisions at US airports over the past few years. 'And in safety, we identify trends… something that happens over and over again. And in the safety world, if you keep having near-misses, eventually you're going to have a midair (collision),' he said. The series of close calls at US airports in early 2023 prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to create an independent safety review team. Its November 2023 final report cited inconsistent funding, outdated technology, short-staffed air traffic control towers and onerous training requirements among the issues 'rendering the current level of safety unsustainable.' The agency announced some immediate action related to hiring and training new air traffic controllers. A longstanding shortage of controllers continues to put strain on US airspace. At the time of the January collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, one air traffic controller was working two different tower positions and was handling both local and helicopter traffic, an air traffic control source told CNN. The source described the set-up as not uncommon. However, the New York Times reported that an internal preliminary FAA report says staffing was 'not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.' Despite ongoing challenges, the safety statistics are reassuring. The DC crash 'was an awful aberration but it was an aberration,' said Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University and a commercial pilot in the UK and US. In its 2024 safety report, released in February 2025, IATA, the trade association of the world's airlines, calculated that last year saw one accident for every 880,000 flights — or seven fatal accidents out of 40.6 million flights in 2024. There were 244 onboard fatalities, compared to 72 the previous year. IATA's previous safety report had labeled 2023 'an exceptionally safe year.' Last year saw 1.13 accidents per million flights according to IATA — up from 2023's 1.09. But the five-year average from 2020-2024 has improved on the statistics from a decade ago. From 2011-2015 the five-year average was one accident for every 456,000 flights. Now it's one for every 810,000. Research sourced by Bloomberg, meanwhile, suggests that 2024 was the deadliest year for aviation since 2018. More than 500 people were killed in 2018 in plane crashes, including the Lion Air accident, the first of two crashes caused by problems with the Boeing Max aircraft. IATA said in its 2023 safety report that the industry has improved its overall safety performance by 61% over the last 10 years. A study co-authored by Arnold Barnett, a professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, highlights aviation safety's substantial improvement over many years. The main takeaway is that in the period between 2018 and 2022, the worldwide death risk per boarding was one in 13.7 million. To put that in context, there's a much higher chance of being killed in a shark attack, or give birth to quadruplets, than to die in a plane crash. That was a significant improvement on the 2008 to 2017 period, where the risk was one in 7.9 million, and a dramatic drop compared to the 1968 to 1977 period, where the risk was one death every 350,000 boardings. The past half-century has seen major progress, Barnett said. 'We're now only about 1/38th as likely to die in a plane accident compared to the levels of the late 1960s and 1970s.' Speaking to CNN after the DC crash, Brickhouse was hopeful that the tragedy would bring weaknesses in the current aviation system to light. 'And hopefully putting the spotlight and the attention on those weaknesses will give us a good chance to improve in any areas that we need to improve in.' Gratton agreed. 'Obviously the systems broke down,' he said of the DC crash, adding that recommendations for the prevention of future accidents will 'roll out immediately across the USA and probably some will roll out fairly quickly afterwards across the world.' 'The simple fact that that happens is why aviation is so safe,' he said. He contrasted aviation's global response to plane crashes with how other kinds of accidents are viewed in the aftermath. 'If there was a road accident outside your home and 20 people killed, would there be a proper report in a year, with recommendations rolled out across the country? No, because it's nowhere near as robust as the air transportation system, investigating problems, and publishing and using recommendations when anything went wrong. That, fundamentally, is why aviation is so safe.' It's not all reassuring. Both Gratton and Geoffrey Thomas, editor of aviation website 42,000 Feet and previously the founder of AirlineRatings, the first website to rank airlines by safety, agree that seeing three recent fatal commercial accidents in the space of a month — those of Jeju Air, Azerbaijan Airlines and American Airlines — are symbolic of a changing aviation landscape, with more congested skies and expanding war zones. Gratton also says that there's a question of 'normalization of deviance' in the DC crash — the idea that people and institutions can essentially start to cut corners instead of playing by the book. 'The obvious equivalent is that up until 1912 it was normal to steam at full power through the iceberg fields in the North Atlantic,' he said. After the Titanic sank, this practice stopped. 'But it's 2025 not 1912 — what we should be doing is looking ahead, looking at the near-misses, at statistical probabilities and using that to design what we do,' he said. 'When you fail to do that, and continue to carry on with an unsafe practice, we call that normalization of deviance. I think there's a reasonable case to be made that that happened [in the DC crash].' He doesn't think a helicopter would have been allowed to be transiting at a low level underneath an aircraft on approach to land at London's Heathrow Airport, for example. The helicopter corridor that was in use at the time of the DC crash has subsequently been shut down indefinitely by the FAA, an agency official told CNN. Thomas, meanwhile, has choice words for US politicians when it comes to the flurry of incidents in North America. 'My view is that the US Congress has consistently starved the FAA of the funding it needs, so the American oversight and air traffic control system is not as good as it could be,' he said, speaking shortly after the DC crash. 'You often see almost a yearly occurrence where they're fighting over [funding].' As recently as July 2024, aviation groups urged congress to cover FAA funding shortfalls. 'There's a blame game now, but the reality is that both Republicans and Democrats have starved the FAA of the funds they need to have the world's best air traffic control system,' said Thomas. 'It's a great system — this is the first crash since 2009 and the worst since 2001 – but is it the best? No.' Yet they both reiterate that flying is still the safest form of transport. 'People tend to think about the flight that's taking them to their destination as the only flight, but the reality is that there are over 100,000 commercial flights per day around the world so it's extraordinarily safe,' said Thomas. 'Flying is incredibly safe,' said Gratton. 'And all the processes put in place over a lot of years to make it as safe as possible are still there.' For those still concerned about flying, you're not alone. Aerophobia — fear of flying — affects more than 25 million adults in the United States, according to the Cleveland Clinic. It's a more severe form of flight anxiety — to be classed as aerophobia, your fear must have interfered with your life for six months or more. If you're worried about an upcoming flight, canceling it often feels like the simplest solution, but that short-term relief is harmful long-term, Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, told CNN. 'Your world just shrunk a little smaller and your fear, being reinforced by this, gets larger,' she said, adding that drinking or taking medication to help with the flight anxiety should also be avoided. Exposure therapy — in other words, taking the flight — is the road to recovery, she said, advising undertaking therapy with a skilled professional. But taking that flight doesn't mean boarding the plane in blind panic. Saltz says that meditation, progressive muscle relaxation and 10 minutes of paced deep breathing can help calm you onboard. Watching or listening to something, or talking to a travel companion can also help, she said. Many nervous flyers' fear stems from a lack of knowledge about how things work, and several European airlines aim to address that by running fear of flying courses. Arguably the best known is the day-long Flying with Confidence course run by British Airways, which includes sessions with BA pilots and cabin crew, backed up by a clinical psychologist. The day ends with a real flight operated by the crew who ran the course. Many other nervous flyers swear by alternative techniques such as hypnotherapy or EFT (tapping). But be reassured: Saltz says that phobias, including aerophobia, are 'very treatable.' It's just a matter of finding out what works for you. CNN's Pete Muntean, Alexandra Skores, Kristen Rogers, Jacopo Prisco, Rebekah Riess and Lex Harvey contributed to this report.
The Independent
21-02-2025
- General
- The Independent
Survivors of past air disasters offer support after Toronto crash
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.
Associated Press
20-02-2025
- General
- Associated Press
A flight to a Toronto paramedics conference becomes a real emergency for a former EMT
TORONTO (AP) — Former paramedic Peter Carlson is still having difficulty putting into perspective the shuddering jolt he and 79 others aboard Delta Air Lines flight 4819 experienced earlier this week. One moment, the 40-year-old was looking forward to arriving in Toronto where he was speaking at an Ontario paramedic chiefs convention. The next, he was hanging — strapped only by his seatbelt — looking down at the airplane's ceiling, attempting to assess the chaos around him. As blood flowed from a gash on the back of Carlson's head, he noticed other injured passengers, including one pinned beneath a seat behind him. There was an overwhelming smell of jet fuel as it streamed down the window next to his seat by the plane's right wing which was sheared off during Monday's crash landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. 'It was a forceful impact, a sideways movement and suddenly just inverted,' Carlson told The Associated Press on Wednesday. 'And the only mission was to get out.' Carlson's friend and convention chairman Michael Nolan, 53, was waiting to pick him up when he spotted a plume of black smoke in the distance. 'Are you OK? Something's going on on the runway,' Nolan texted Carlson, not realizing it was his plane. Carlson responded that he was on the tarmac. At first, Nolan thought it meant Carlson's plane had landed. Then his friend sent a follow-up text with a picture of his fellow passengers evacuating the upside-down plane. 'My heart just sank ... knowing that was his reality was absolutely shocking to me and really brought it home,' said Nolan, a paramedic chief in a county north of Ottawa. Instead of just attending a convention about the role paramedics play in the world, the two men found themselves in the middle of a real-life emergency. Nolan rushed to a triage area to assist in treating injured passengers, greeting his friend of over a decade with a big hug. Carlson's paramedic instincts also kicked in, even though he's held a so-called desk job for the past decade. 'I was comfortable with how my body and mind empowered me to do what I needed to do at that point,' he said. 'I was able to see the objective nature of the challenge in front of us, which was to get away from the threat.' Though credited for helping in the evacuation, Carlson deferred praise to the four crew members who shepherded the passengers to safety. That everyone survived astounds him, especially after seeing videos posted online of the Mitsubishi CRJ-900 jet touching down heavily and skidding down the runway before flipping over. 'Even without seeing that, it's remarkable,' Carlson said, noting he bruised his ribs and has several cuts and bruises on his legs. 'I don't know if I'm deserving of going into miracle territory, but it sure feels ...' he added, before pausing to find the appropriate word. 'It's amazing. It's amazing.' The last of the 21 injured passengers was released from the hospital on Thursday. The cuts and bruises will heal, but the mental trauma left Carlson wondering whether he could muster enough resolve on Wednesday to still deliver his address. 'It took me a lot of personal motivation to leave my room,' he said. 'This morning, I just couldn't. I was quite emotional about this whole thing and just really want to be home.' And yet, deliver Carlson did — giving a 20-minute speech in which he outlined his background and influences in paramedicine, the significance of the job and the difference paramedics can make. Whatever anxieties he felt didn't show. Though Carlson longed to be back home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife and three children, his nerves were eased being among his working family of paramedics and Nolan. National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Cindy Woodhouse welcomed Carlson on Tuesday into a drumming circle of healing. A day later, Ontario paramedic chiefs association president Greg Sage honored Carlson's efforts on the airplane with a certificate. 'I think every single one of us in this room would hope that if we personally were faced with what Pete was, that we would respond in a similar manner,' Sage said. 'I think he's inspired all of us.' Carlson's trip to Toronto began with a hug with Nolan during a very trying time. Two days later, the two shared a more joyous hug onstage after Carlson accepted his award to a standing ovation. 'I was not as present the last couple of days as I had hoped to be,' Carlson apologized to the crowd. 'Given the events as they've played out, I can't think of a better group of people in terms of taking care of one another in their community and myself,' Carlson said. 'So just a very big thank you.'
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Passengers On Flipped Toronto Plane Describe Harrowing Ordeal
On Monday, a Delta Air Lines flight departing from Minneapolis crashed at Toronto's Pearson international Airport, flipping upside-down on the runway. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the flight, DL 4819, was carrying 80 people, all of whom made it out alive. Now, some are speaking out about their harrowing ordeal. John Nelson, one passenger, recounted to CNN that the plane's occupants 'tried to get out of there as quickly as possible.' 'We hit the ground and the plane went sideways and I believe we skidded on our side and flipped over on our back,' Nelson told the outlet. As the plane came to a halt, the passengers made a swift dash for the nearest exit. He described the scene as 'mass chaos,' and like being on an 'emotional rollercoaster.' After Nelson escaped, he said, there was yet another explosion. Fortunately, he noted, firefighters were on hand to control the situation. Another passenger, Peter Koukov, said people onboard were 'hanging like bats' after the plane came to rest. He managed to unbuckle himself, but said others needed assistance. Peter Carlson, also aboard the flight, told CBC News that the landing felt 'forceful,' and his first instinct was 'to get out of this.' 'What I saw was everyone on that plane suddenly became very close, in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another,' Carlson told the outlet. 'That was powerful, but there was definite: 'What now? Who is leading? How do we find ourselves away from this?'' CNN also reported that flight attendants played a key role in helping passengers escape, assisting them in crawling out through the open exit doors. This morning on X, formerly Twitter, Delta confirmed that '21 injured passengers were initially transported to local hospitals. As of Tuesday morning, 19 have been released.' 'Our most pressing priority remains taking care of all customers and Endeavor crew members who were involved,' said Delta CEO Ed Bastian. 'We'll do everything we can to support them and their families in the days ahead, and I know the hearts, thoughts and prayers of the entire Delta community are with them.' After the incident, Deborah Flint, CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, said, 'We are very grateful that there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries.' Delta Air Lines Flight Crashes At Toronto Airport, Injuring 21 Delta Airlines Doubles Down On Commitment To DEI Initiatives Delta Flight Aborts Takeoff, Evacuates On Runway With Emergency Slides
