In Monday’s dramatic Delta Air Lines crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport, the regional jet clipped a wing, flipped upside down in the snow and reportedly caused an explosion at the scene. Yet, crucially, all 80 people on board survived, something aviation experts attributed to aircraft design and the responses of the cabin crew and rescue teams.
“Quite a few things went well here,” Graham Braithwaite, director of aerospace and aviation at Britain’s Cranfield University, said in an interview. “The fact that there were no fatalities with an aircraft left upside down on a runway tells you a lot about how the restraints worked, how the aircraft design worked, how the rescue teams responded and how the cabin crew played their role.”
Passengers on the Bombardier CRJ-900 that departed from Minneapolis described feeling a hard landing before going sideways and skidding, with the plane eventually coming to rest upside down. Video of the crash showed smoke billowing from a snowy runway and a burst of orange flames. Delta said Tuesday that 21 passengers were brought to hospitals with injuries, and that all but two had been released by that morning.
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