Plane with 80 onboard crash at Toronto Airport, 18 injured

Mangalore Today /ndtv

Toronto, February 18, 2025: A Delta Air Lines jet with 80 people onboard crash-landed Monday at Toronto’s main airport, officials said, flipping upside down and leaving at least 18 people injured but causing no deaths. 

Endeavor Air Flight 4819 with 76 passengers and four crew was landing in the afternoon in Canada’s largest metropolis, having flown from Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota, the airline said. No explanation of the cause of the accident, or how the plane ended up flipped with its wings clipped, has been provided.

"It’s very early on. It’s really important that we do not speculate. What we can say is the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions," said Todd Aitken, the airport’s fire chief.

He confirmed that 18 people had been injured in the accident, with no fatalities.

Earlier, paramedic services told AFP three people were critically injured -- a child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s. All of the wounded, including those with minor injuries, were taken to area hospitals either by ambulance or helicopter, said the paramedic services’ Lawrence Saindon.

Dramatic images on local broadcasts and shared on social media showed people stumbling away from the upside down CRJ-900 plane, shielding their faces from strong gusts of wind and blowing snow.

Fire crews appeared to douse the aircraft with water as smoke wafted from the fuselage and as passengers were still exiting the plane.

Toronto airport authority chief executive Deborah Flint told a news conference the incident did not involve any other planes. Emergency crews were "heroic" in their response, she said, "reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers."

Some of them "have already been reunited with their friends and their families," she added.

The airport suspended all flights after the incident, before resuming them at around 5:00 pm local time, more than two hours later. It said passengers should expect long delays.

’It’s upside down’

Facebook user John Nelson, who said he was a passenger on the flight, posted a video from the tarmac showing the overturned aircraft and narrated: "Our plane crashed. It’s upside down."

"Most people appear to be okay. We’re all getting off," he added.

Delta said the flight operated by its subsidiary Endeavor had been "involved in an incident."

"Initial reports were that there are no fatalities," the airline said through a spokesperson’s statement.

"The hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected by today’s incident at Toronto-Pearson International Airport," Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said.

A massive snow storm hit eastern Canada on Sunday. Strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures could still be felt in Toronto on Monday when airlines added flights to make up for weekend cancellations due to the storm.

"The snow has stopped coming down, but frigid temperatures and high winds are moving in," the airport warned earlier, adding that it was "expecting a busy day in our terminals with over 130,000 travellers on board around 1,000 flights."

Federal Transport Minister Anita Anand confirmed there were 80 people on the flight. "I’m closely following the serious incident at the Pearson Airport involving Delta Airlines flight 4819 from Minneapolis," she posted on X.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was "relieved there are no casualties after the incident."

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board deployed a team of investigators to the site of the crash.

They will be assisted by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which also sent a team to the scene, according to US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

The crash comes after other recent air incidents in North America including a mid-air collision between a US Army helicopter and a passenger jet in Washington that killed 67 people, and a medical transport plane crash in Philadelphia that left seven dead.




Pete Koukov, a professional skier from Colorado who was on Flight 4819, said that nothing seemed amiss during the plane’s final descent.

A Delta Air Lines passenger jet made a dramatic crash landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon, flipping upside down on the tarmac with its tail and one wing shorn off.

But all 80 people aboard clambered out of the jet, which was coming in from Minneapolis. At least 18 of them suffered injuries, some of them critical but not life threatening. Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident, which occurred amid strong winds and drifting snow. It was the latest in a spate of incidents that have rattled travelers globally, including a crash in South Korea in December that killed 179 people and a fatal midair collision near Washington that left 67 people dead.

Here is what to know about the crash in Toronto.

The plane’s roof became its floor. Pete Koukov, a professional skier from Colorado who was on Flight 4819, said that nothing seemed amiss during the plane’s final descent.

"The second that the wheels hit the ground, then everything happened," Koukov, 28, said in an interview Monday night. "The next thing I know, we’re sideways."

The plane skidded on its right side, said Koukov, who was sitting at a window seat on the other side of the plane and saw flames as the plane hit the ground. It eventually ended belly side up.

"I unbuckled pretty fast and kind of lowered myself to the floor, which was the ceiling," Koukov said. "People were panicking."

There was drifting snow.

There were strong winds coming from the west at about 29 mph, with gusts of up to 38 mph, about 2:15 p.m., the time of the crash, according to authorities.There was also drifting snow in Toronto, which was struck by two snowstorms in the past few days. The weather advisories for Toronto Pearson International Airport at the time of the crash "indicated a gusting crosswind and blowing snow," according to Flightradar24, an aviation tracking website. The cause of the crash will be investigated by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which will be assisted by a team of American investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration.

There were 76 passengers onboard.

The flight had a crew of four, according to Delta, and the rest were passengers. Of those, 22 were Canadians.

Some of the injured were taken to hospitals but most passengers were taken to a Sheraton Gateway Hotel, near the airport’s terminals.

They left about 7 p.m. local time, picked up by taxis and family members, a hotel staff member said, declining to provide more details. Operations at the airport resumed at 5 p.m. local time although two of the five runways remain closed.

The plane was a Bombardier jet.

The model CRJ900 aircraft was operated by Endeavor Air, a Delta subsidiary that typically operates smaller planes for the airline.

It was about 16 years old, according to FAA records. With regular maintenance, such passenger jets are often operated for two to three decades, or more. More than 380 CRJ900s are used by airlines around the world, according to Cirium, an aviation data company. The aircraft, which has been in operation for more than two decades, has a solid safety record, according to Cirium data.