The miracle of Delta Flight 4819. All safe: “Heroic crew”

by Marzio Pelù

TORONTO – A miracle. It is difficult to define in other words what happened on one of the five runways of Toronto Pearson International Airport at 2.30pm on Monday afternoon, when Delta Air Lines flight 4819 coming from Minneapolis, USA, operated by the subsidiary Endeavor Air, crashed on the ground. 

A miracle, because despite the scale of the accident none of the 80 people on board (76 passengers and 4 crew members: 22 Canadians, the rest of other nationalities) died. And out of twenty-one injured people taken to hospital, nineteen were discharged today: only two were retained but their lives wouldn’t be in danger.

But even miracles need “a hand”. In this case, many “hands”: the crew members on board. All “heroes” for their “textbook” response to the accident, as Deborah Flint, president and CEO of Toronto airport, said today during a press conference called to take stock of the case. “The crew on Delta flight 4819 heroically led passengers to safety, evacuating a jet that had overturned on the runway on landing amid smoke and fire. I thank each and everyone of these heroes” Flint said, adding that also “airport emergency workers mounted a textbook response, reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers”.

The plane, a Bombardier CRJ-900, arrived in Toronto in the early afternoon of Monday, in prohibitive weather conditions (watch the video above from Twitter X – @airplusnews): in the midst of freshly fallen snow following two consecutive winter storms, amidst winds of 51 km/h with gusts of up to 65 km/h and with a temperature of -8.6° (data from the Meteorological Service of Canada).

As can be seen in the videos that have gone viral online, as soon as the plane touched the ground it caught fire on one side, tilted, lost a wing and overturned (watch the video above, from Twitter X – @airplusnews). A few seconds later, as can be seen from the dramatic videos shot by the passengers (watch the video below, from Twitter X – @airplusnews) the crew began to let people off board while the firefighters rushed to the scene, “watered” the plane, averting an explosion, thus allowing the passengers to get off safely and walked on the snowy asphalt towards safety.

The accident made it necessary, in those dramatic moments, to close the airport: hundreds of flights were canceled on Monday (462 out of the 1,006 scheduled for the entire day). Then, gradually, three of the five runways were reopened, leaving two closed: the longest north-south runway and the longest east-west runway.

The plane remains there, on one of the two runways: investigators must in fact continue examining the wreckage on the asphalt for at least the next 48 hours, to try to understand the causes of the accident. Inevitably, there will be further delays and cancellations in the coming hours.

The last serious accident at Pearson occurred twenty years ago: on August 2, 2005, an Air France Airbus A340 (flight 358 landing from Paris) skidded off the runway and caught fire while a storm was raging. All 309 passengers (and crew) were rescued. Another miracle. Then and now.

In the two videos above: inside the plane after the crash and the rescue (from Twitter X – @airplusnews)

 

Crosswinds, human mistake or a broken wheel?

The causes of the accident are being investigated

The authorities have not yet provided precise information on the causes of the accident: the investigation, moreover, is still in its initial stages and does not appear easy. It is carried out by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, in collaboration with American colleagues, as Delta Air Lines is a US company.

As Global News reports in an article published today, a pilot for a regional airline who flew the Bombardier CRJ noted that photos of the crashed plane showed the front landing gear intact, while the other two wheels and the landing gear appeared to have been sheared off: such damage suggested, in his opinion, that the Delta Air Lines pilot was going sideways, not straight, before losing control of the plane and crashing, probably due to strong gusts of wind, or snow and ice on the runway, or a dangerous combination of both, the pilot suggested.

“It’s an easy plane to land, even with crosswinds, as long as you are within the manufacturer’s limitations” said the pilot of the regional airline, who did not want to be named because he is employed in the industry. “Maybe a broken wheel, or a frozen brake also occurred during the landing” added the pilot, who warned against drawing hasty conclusions.

John Gradek, a professor of Aviation Management at McGill University, told Global News‘ “The Morning Show” today that the crash could have been caused by many different factors such as winds, runway conditions or mechanical problems with the plane.

And then he added, based on one of the videos that surfaced online, that “it looks like the aircraft hit the runway abnormally hard, landing gear failure in the back of the airplane was dragging on the runway. Sparks coming out, wing got clipped … and the aircraft flipped over on its ceiling. Very unusual for an aircraft to do this, but there’s a myriad of circumstances” Gradek said. The ongoing investigations will shed full light on what happened.

Ma.Pe.