Three passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight including a child were critically injured when the plane crash-landed and flipped upside-down at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday.
Flight records identify the craft as Delta Flight 4819, which took off from Minneapolis about 11:47 a.m. The crash happened just before 3 p.m. Images show the mangled airliner smoldering on the snowy runway as dazed passengers scrambled out.
The belly-up jet looked badly damaged in photos and video circulating on social media, with one wing severely crumpled and the tail section partially sheared off.
At least eight people have been reported injured so far, according to CP24 News.
Paramedics told the BBC it transported the three gravely injured passengers to three different hospitals, including a “pediatric patient” and a man in his 60s.
The injured child’s age was not immediately clear, nor was the age of the other adult passenger rushed to the hospital.
It was not immediately clear whether there were any fatalities on board, but Toronto Pearson posted on X soon after the crash that “all passengers and crew members were accounted for.”
Airport staff told CTV News that the airport had shut down all arrivals and departures in the wake of the crash.
Dramatic video posted on Facebook by a passenger shows firefighters, paramedics and other emergency personnel frantically making their way across the snow-swept runway to the upside-down plane.
“We’re in Toronto. We just landed. Our plane crashed, it’s upside-down. Fire department is on site. It’s upside-down. Most people appear to be OK. We’re all getting off. So [that’s what’s] going on,” passenger John Nelson can be heard narrating in a video he posted on Facebook moments after the crash.
Constable Sarah Patten of the Peel Regional Police in Ontario told Reuters, “It is my understanding that most of the passengers are out and unharmed but we’re still trying to make sure so we’re still on scene investigating.”
The Association of Flight Attendants union confirmed reports in a post on X that there were “no fatalities” in the incident.
The plane is a Bombardier CRJ-900LR, which can seat up to 88 passengers and four crew members, according to flight records.
The crash followed a weekend winter storm in the area which dumped nearly nine inches of snow on the airport, forcing crews to work overnight Sunday to clear key runways.
It’s the first major incident involving a commercial passenger jet since the Jan. 29 crash of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in which 67 passengers and crew were killed.
