Delta Airlines has offered $30,000 (£23,762) to all passengers onboard the plane that crash-landed and flipped over at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday.
All 80 passengers and crew were safely evacuated after Delta Airlines flight 4819 crash-landed on a snowy runway at Toronto Pearson Airport at 2.45 pm local time (7.45 pm GMT) following a flight from Minneapolis.
At least 21 people suffered minor injuries, with one passenger remaining in hospital.
A spokesperson for Delta confirmed it has offered each passenger $30,000 and has told “customers this gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights”.
Photos and videos on social media showed the Mitsubishi CRJ-900LR overturned with fire crews seen scrambling across the runway to extinguish flames as passengers climbed out and walked across the tarmac.
Footage shows the moment a Delta Airlines flight crashed at Toronto Pearson Airport where all 80 passengers were safely evacuated
Peter Carlson, a paramedic who was travelling to Toronto for a conference and onboard the plane, told The Associated Press: “It was very uncomfortable, a very just solid, uncomfortable experience — forceful on the impact, sideways movement and suddenly just inverted.
“The only mission was to get out.”
“I have a laceration, abrasion, some bruises on my legs, some bruises on my ribs, but alive,” Carlson added.
It is currently not clear what caused the plane to flip over. Communications between the tower and pilot were normal on approach but it is thought weather may have played a factor.
“At this point, it’s far too early to say what the cause of this accident might be,” Ken Webster, a senior investigator for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said in a video statement Tuesday.
How were fatalities avoided?
The engineering of aeroplanes, flight crew and passengers themselves are credited for saving all lives aboard the Delta Airlines flight.
Jeff Guzzetti, an airline safety expert and former US aviation investigator, said the seats and seat belts helped prevent fatalities.
He explained that passenger jet seats can withstand impacts up to 16 times the force of gravity and that seat belts kept passengers secure as the plane slid to a halt upside down at Toronto Pearson Airport.
“The odds of getting injured or killed in an commercial airline accident is far less than driving in your car,” Guzzetti said.
Experts also credited the crew, who calmly and quickly shepherded many of the passengers off the plane before emergency crews even arrived on the scene.
Deborah Flint, CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, called them “heroes,” while Delta CEO Ed Bastian praised their response as a “testament to the safety that’s embedded in the systems”.
McCormick said: “Aviation is and remains the safest form of transportation.”
He added that it was no fluke that 80 people were able to walk away from the Toronto crash, saying “that is because the safety of aviation is constantly improving”.
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