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At least 18 passengers on board a crashed Delta Airlines regional jet have survived death after the plane flipped upside down while landing at Toronto Pearson Airport, Canada.
Three people among the survivors, including a child, as gathered suffered critical injuries, and were rushed to the hospital by the Canadian air ambulance while the rest have been admitted to a nearby health center for quick treatments.
The victims were said to have been suspended upside down in their seats and had to release themselves, dropping onto the ceiling before clambering out onto the snow-covered tarmac.
As reported, there were 76 passengers and four crew on board the 16-year-old CRJ900 aircraft, which was involved in a single-aircraft accident after departing from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
A video shared by one of the passenge, John Nelson on his social media handle, which revealed the aftermath of the crash, showed a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.
“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,” he said.
According to the Canadian authority, the incident happened around 2;13 am last night amid high winds and frigid temperatures and would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz said he was “grateful to the first responders and professionals on the scene”.
Similarly, an official, Flint called the response by emergency personnel “textbook” and credited them with helping ensure no loss of life.
Flint added that twenty-two passengers on board the ill-fated flight were Canadian nationals and the rest were “multinational.
Three previous cases of planes flipping over on landing involved McDonnell Douglas’s MD-11 model. In 2009, a FedEx freighter turned over on landing at Tokyo’s Narita airport, killing both pilots. In 1999, a China Airlines flight was inverted in Hong Kong, killing three of 315 occupants. In 1997, another FedEx freighter flipped over at Newark with no fatalities.
