Three critically injured after plane flips at Toronto airport

BBC-One child and two adults have been critically injured after a plane crashed and overturned while landing at Toronto Pearson airport in Canada, according to emergency services.

Images shared on social media show a plane which appears to have flipped over and is lying on its roof on the snow-covered tarmac. It appears to be missing at least one of its wings.

Toronto Pearson airport said the crash involved a Delta Air Lines flight arriving from Minneapolis, and that “all passengers and crew are accounted for”.

The flight had eighty people on board – 76 passengers and four crew – Delta said. Fifteen have been transported to hospital in total, the local paramedic service said.

Ontario air ambulance service Ornge said it haddispatched three air ambulance helicopters and two land ambulances to the scene.

The patients with critical injuries include a child, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 40s, it added.

The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said the plane involved was Delta Air Lines Flight 4819, being operated by one of its subsidiaries, Endeavor Air.

Delta confirmed that a CRJ900 aircraft was involved in the incident at about 15:30 ET (20:30 GMT) on Monday afternoon.

It was carrying 76 passengers and four crew, the airline added, and it said its “primary focus is taking care of those impacted”.

The airport was closed shortly after the incident, but flights into and out of Toronto Pearson resumed around 17:00 local time, the airport said.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team to “gather information and assess the occurrence”.

Video footage shared on social media shows people clambering out of the overturned aircraft, with fire crews spraying it with foam.

“We’re in Toronto, we just landed. Our plane crashed, it’s upside down,” said one man as he filmed a video taken from outside the upturned plane.

The video, which has not been verified by the BBC, shows passengers being helped out of the plane’s doors by airport staff, with some then running away from the plane’s entrance.

“Most people appear to be OK. We’re all getting off, there’s some smoke going on,” he can be heard saying.

Constable Sarah Patten of the Peel Regional Police in Ontario said “there is a plane crash, however we don’t know the circumstances surrounding it at this point,” according to the news agency 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,” she said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said provincial officials are in contact with the airport and local authorities and will provide any help that’s needed.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said he was “grateful to the first responders and professionals on the scene”.

After the crash, the airport’s arrival and departure boards showed scores of delays and cancellations to flights.

Some passengers told the BBC that they were now stuck in Toronto for several days after their flights were cancelled, with none available on Monday or Tuesday.

James and Andrea Turner were in customs – located right before the departure gates – when they were suddenly told to evacuate.

“They got rid of everybody from customs to security, and then put everybody back to the general area,” James said, adding that the departures hall was packed as a result.

The couple had been due to board the plane that crashed on the runway. Their flight was then cancelled – the third delay to their trip, after their previous journeys were rescheduled due to bad weather.

Toronto Pearson airport had been experiencing weather-related delays over the last few days, with heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures battering parts of Ontario.

Two storms – one on Wednesday and one on Sunday – covered the city with a total of 30-50cm (11.8-19.6 inches) of snow.

The BBC’s US partner CBS reports that there was light snow falling at the time of the crash.

There were wind gusts over 40mph (64km/h) and a crosswind, it added.

Earlier on Monday, the airport warned that “frigid temperatures and high winds were moving in”.

It said a “busy day” was expected, with airlines “catching up after this weekend’s snowstorm which dumped over 22cm of snow at the airport”.

“Our airfield team has continued their work throughout the night to clear critical areas so planes can safely arrive and depart,” it said.

The crash is at least the fourth major aviation incident in North America in the past month – including a deadly in-air collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter near Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan airport, which killed all 67 people on board.

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