A Delta Airline plane is seen flipped on the tarmac at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Feb. 18, 2025Chris Young/The Canadian Press
More than a dozen people were injured Monday after a U.S. airliner flipped onto its roof upon landing, creating a fiery scene amid severe winter weather at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
A child was one of three people in critical condition, with 12 others being treated for minor to moderate injuries. As of Monday evening, no deaths were reported.
The incident shuttered Canada’s busiest airport for hours starting around 2:45 p.m. Smoke could be seen pouring out of the overturned aircraft in videos posted online. Passengers of the plane, Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minnesota, ran onto the gusty, snowy tarmac.
Air ambulance provider Ornge said the child and two adults who sustained critical injuries were airlifted to hospital. The other 12 passengers taken to hospital “were walking wounded with minor, mild to moderate injuries,” said Lawrence Saindon, Peel Regional Paramedic Services supervisor.
All 76 passengers and four crew, including 22 Canadians, were evacuated and accounted for. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
A new aerial video shows the Delta airliner that crashed and flipped upside down in Toronto on Monday.
The Associated Press
Early reports had said 18 people were injured in the crash, but Mr. Saindon clarified that while 18 people were taken to hospital, three of them were uninjured family members.
A recording of the radio transmissions between the control tower and the aircraft provided a glimpse of the moments shortly before and after the crash.
“We just had a crash on runway 23 here,” an air traffic controller is heard saying in audio posted online by Live ATC. “The airport is closed.”
“We’ve got people walking around outside the aircraft,” one man says in the audio. “Yeah, the aircraft is upside down and burning,” comes a response.
Videos posted on social media show passengers evacuating the Delta plane that crashed and flipped at Toronto's Pearson airport.
The Canadian Press
The plane that went down was a Canadian-made Mitsubishi CRJ900, manufactured by Bombardier 16 years ago, according to FlightRadar24.
Passenger John Nelson posted a video of the upside-down Delta plane to Facebook shortly after the crash occurred. In the comments below, he wrote: “I landed and was stuck upside down. It exploded shortly after the video.”
Delta passengers recall moment their plane crashed at Toronto Pearson airport
Amy Hersherhoren was on a different plane taxiing for takeoff from Toronto to Los Angeles when she heard the crash.
“I felt and heard a tremendously loud jet engine noise and deep vibration,” she said. “There’s no mistaking it really.”
The atmosphere aboard her plane quickly turned anxious as passengers were left in the dark about the incident before being brought back to the airport, she said.
Upon deplaning, Ms. Hersherhoren described feeling shaken up. “I’m actually still trembling because the noise and the feeling that I heard, I knew something wasn’t right.”
As of 5 p.m., Toronto Pearson posted to X saying flights had resumed.
During the suspension of air traffic in Toronto, 14 flights were rerouted to Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport and many diverted passengers remained in Canada’s capital after flights in Toronto resumed. Several flights were also rerouted to Montreal’s international airport.
While the cause of the crash is unclear, the incident occurred amidst an already tumultuous long weekend at the Toronto airport. Hundreds of flights were either cancelled or delayed Sunday, owing to a winter storm that continues to affect much of Eastern Canada with high winds, extreme cold and heavy snowfall.
Earlier on Monday, Pearson said on social media that it was expecting a busy day as airlines were catching up on significant delays and cancellations. More than 130,000 passengers were expected to board around 1,000 flights, the airport stated.
At the time of the crash, weather conditions at the airport were -9 C and windy, with blowing snow and gusts from the west of up to 64 kilometres an hour, according to Environment Canada.
Todd Aitken, fire chief for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, played down extreme weather as a factor on Monday evening.
“What we can say is that the runway was dry and there were no crosswind conditions,” he said at a press conference.
Passengers were already escaping the smouldering aircraft when his crews arrived on the scene, he said. “This is an active investigation, it’s really early on. It’s really important we do not speculate,” he said.
GTAA CEO Deobrah Flint declined to take any questions from the media at an evening press conference but praised the airport’s response to the incident as “textbook.”
“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” she said.
Two runways where the crash took place will remain closed until the investigation concludes, she said.
“No airport CEO wants to have these types of press conferences, but this is exactly what our emergency, our operations and our first responders partners are all practised and trained for,” she said. “This outcome is due in part to their heroic work. I thank them profusely.”
When the aircraft crashed it was just ending its second flight of the day, according to FlightRadar24. On Monday morning, the plane flew to Minneapolis from Cleveland. On Sunday, it made six flights – a typical day – touching down in New York, Detroit, Toronto and Green Bay, Wis., flight records show.
In January, 67 people died after a variant of the same model, a CRJ700 flown by American Airlines, collided with a U.S. Army helicopter in Washington, D.C.
John Cox, CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Fla., said this type of incident is extremely uncommon.
“We’ve seen a couple of cases of takeoffs where airplanes have ended up inverted, but it’s pretty rare,” Mr. Cox said.
The CRJ900 is a proven aircraft, he added, which has been in service for decades and does a good job of handling inclement weather. While it was windy at the time of the crash, he said it wasn’t outside the realm of what the airplanes and pilots are designed for and trained on.
In a statement, Delta Air Lines said it had cancelled its flights to and from Toronto’s airport for the remainder of Monday evening and issued a travel waiver. Delta added on Tuesday that most of the passengers sent to hospital have been released, and that Delta and Delta Connection flights have resumed at Pearson.
Several Canadian and American politicians took to social media Monday to express their relief about there being no fatalities and their gratitude for first responders.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will be in charge of the investigation into the crash, with assistance from a team of U.S. investigators led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
With reports from Sean Silcoff, Temur Durrani, Chris Wilson-Smith, Reuters, the Canadian Press and the Associated Press