Passengers injured as plane flips upside down at Toronto airport

A Delta Air Lines regional plane, on Monday, February 17, 2025, flipped upside down upon landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson Airport amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board.

Three people on flight DL4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, a Canadian air ambulance official said, with 15 others also immediately taken to hospitals.

Some of the injured have since been released, Delta said on Monday night.

The U.S. carrier said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board.

The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier and powered by GE Aerospace engines, can seat up to 90 people. At least one of the two wings was no longer attached to the plane, video showed after the accident.

Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.

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Passenger John Nelson posted a video of the aftermath on Facebook, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.

He later said there was no indication of anything unusual before landing, Reuters reported.

Nelson said: “We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down.

“I was able to just unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. And then some people were kind of hanging and needed some help being helped down, and others were able to get down on their own.”

Toronto Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, FlightRadar24 data showed.

The reported weather conditions at the time of the crash indicated a “gusting crosswind and blowing snow,” the flight tracking website said.

The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, D.C., killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.

The Star