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A Delta Air Lines plane crash-landed and flipped upside down at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday, the latest aviation accident involving a regional jet operated by a US carrier.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said that Delta flight 4819 “crashed while landing” on Monday afternoon. The Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft originated from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, a Delta hub.
“All 80 people on board were evacuated,” the FAA said. Delta said the plane was carrying 76 passengers and four crew members.
Photos and videos from the scene showed the aircraft lying belly-up on a snowy, windswept tarmac. Heavy snow fell in the Toronto area over the weekend, with roughly 25cm on the ground.
Toronto officials said that the cause of the accident was under investigation and declined to speculate. But “what we can say is the runway was dry”, said airport fire chief Todd Aitken, adding that there were no “crosswind conditions”.
He said 19 injured passengers had been taken to hospitals. Officials said one of those passengers was a child and that two patients had to be transported by air ambulance.
There were “no fatalities” and none of the patients had life-threatening injuries, according to Lawrence Saindon, a superintendent with Peel Regional Paramedic Services. “All other patients are mild to walking-wounded injuries,” he added.
Canadian and US investigators would probe the accident, officials said.
MHI RJ Aviation, which acquired the CRJ series of aircraft and supporting operations from Bombardier in 2020, said it would co-operate with the investigation.
The crash halted flights to and from Pearson for more than two hours, though they resumed at about 5pm. Almost 600 flights were cancelled or delayed, according to tracking site FlightAware.
Delta cancelled all of its flights at the airport for the remainder of Monday.
The incident comes less than three weeks after a mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a US military Black Hawk helicopter just outside Washington killed 67 people as the commercial plane approached Reagan National Airport.
The American Airlines plane was a smaller member of the CRJ aircraft stable.
US federal investigators on Friday said that the Black Hawk cockpit might have been receiving “bad data”, meaning the crew could have been looking at inaccurate altitude readings.
It is also possible the pilots in the helicopter, who were on a night vision goggle test flight, may not have heard critical instructions from air traffic control.
President Donald Trump blamed Democrats and diversity, equity and inclusion policies for the Washington collision.
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