It has been three days since Delta Air Lines flight 4819 crashed upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday. The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has repeatedly said it is too early to determine the cause of the crash, however, several aviation experts have offered their theories to CTV News about what may have gone wrong during the final moments of descent.
The crash occurred at around 2:15 p.m. as the flight arrived from Minneapolis/St. Paul, carrying 80 people in what was supposed to be a routine landing.
To date, plane crashes remain rare and are often described as less likely than winning a lottery jackpot. In fact, the last major crash on Canadian soil was in 2011 when a First Air charter flight from Yellowknife to Resolute, Nvt., crashed into a hill during approach, killing 12 of the 15 people on board.
In this circumstance, passengers on Flight 4819 sustained a range of injuries, including back sprains, head injuries, and nausea, according to Peel paramedics.
As of Thursday, all 21 passengers injured in the crash have been released from the hospital, and the wreckage has been removed from the runway.
Hard landing and flare issues
In an interview with CP24, former pilot Keith Mackey said the aircraft appeared to descend too rapidly and failed to execute a proper flare, a manoeuvre that allows for a gentler landing.
“The airplane appears to be descending very rapidly and doesn’t flare as you’d expect it to as it approaches the runway, so I think that was what happened with the hard landing,” Mackey later told CTV News Channel. “I think it was just beyond the structural capability of the airplane.”
He also noted the weather conditions at the time were less than ideal, with snow and limited visibility.
“The weather that I observed in these clips, it certainly was snowing and the visibility was limited so it certainly wasn’t a perfect weather day,” he said.
Eugene Abramovici, president of Falconmet Engineering and Laboratories, also pointed to the lack of flare in the widely circulated video of the crash.
“They went straight parallel to the ground; there was no flaring,” Abramovici said. “Flare landing is lifting the nose up in order to reduce the vertical acceleration of the aircraft.”
Unusual aircraft behaviour
Aviation expert John Gradek, a lecturer at McGill University’s School of Aviation Management, said the way the aircraft flipped suggested something unusual happened in the last seconds before impact.
“It’s an absolute miracle that everybody got out of that airplane without any fatalities,” Gradek told CTV’s Your Morning.
Gradek also noted the aircraft’s right wing, which houses the fuel tanks, ripped off on impact.
“When you have that type of situation, the fuel running down the windows of the airplane on landing — the wing got ripped off the airplane,” he said. “That’s where the fuel tanks are.”
Crosswinds and bad weather conditions
Experts say crosswinds and precipitation are potential factors in the crash, though the TSB has yet to confirm their role.
“Each aircraft has certification limits as to what they can handle as far as crosswinds,” Mackey said.
Aviation expert Phyl Durdey cautioned that determining the cause could take time, but acknowledged that wind and precipitation are often contributors to similar incidents.
“We’d just have to see what the black boxes say,” Durdey said, calling the CRJ-900 “very reliable.”
Aircraft safety and structural integrity
Aviation safety analyst John Cox told CP24 that despite being launched in 2001 by Bombardier, the CRJ-900 is a well-built aircraft.
“It was certified to high standards both in its structural strength and ability to get people out in a hurry,” Cox said. “So, this was a well-built airplane experiencing a very traumatic event, and the emergency evacuation design and certification worked exactly as it should have.”
Although Toronto had been dealing with harsh winter conditions for a week before the crash, Cox said he does not believe that will be a major factor in the investigation.
“I think the fact that the airplane is missing its right wing is going to be something investigators look at very seriously and early,” he said. “There is going to be a lot of information that investigators will have to look at”
Ongoing investigation
The TSB continues to investigate, with a focus on the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which are expected to provide crucial details, Mackey said.
“I don’t think this is going to be very difficult to solve because a lot of the information will be from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.”
Until then, experts say it remains unclear whether mechanical failure, weather conditions, or pilot error played a role in the crash.
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Alex Arsenych, Aarjavee Raaj, CTV’s Dorcas Marfo, and CP24’s Codi Wilson and Bryann Aguilar
