The Delta plane that landed at the snow-clad Pearson Airport in Canada with its face up suffered a gear failure at the last moment and the plane was descending at a very high speed, the preliminary investigation released Thursday said. The crash-landing on February 17 resulted in passengers getting hospitalized though there was no fatality.
Toronto’s Pearson Airport at that time was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures and during the landing of this particular Delta plane, the airspeed was 155 mph.
The investigation report does not provide a final cause for the crash. It said the jet’s right main landing gear collapsed after the plane touched the runway and in a fraction of a second it flipped.
“At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right [main landing gear] fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire,” the report stated.
“The exact sequence of these events is still to be determined by further examination of the fracture surfaces,” it added.
What happened to the Delta plane coming from Minneapolis?
The aircraft, operated by Delta Airline’s Endeavor Air subsidiary, flipped at the landing with its tail catching fire. It was carrying 76 passengers, two flight crew members and two cabin crew members. The aircraft was a CL-600-2D24 (Regional Jet Series 900) manufactured by Bombardier Inc. in 2008. As the pilots came on the radar after the incident, the flying experience of them was later released. The first officer was the pilot flying the plane. At the time of the crash, she had around 1,422 hours total flight time, including 418.7 hours on the type of aircraft involved in the incident, the report said.
The captain was the pilot monitoring for the flight. He had 3,570 hours total flight time at the time of the crash, including 764 hours on the same aircraft type.
