Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport | Hacker News Reader

Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport

cbc.ca

575 pointsjaredwiener705 comments

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Clear view from the plane waiting to take off

https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1isabt...

Which also brings into mind cockpit distractions but its amazing they caught this on video.

From the same thread, an AMA by a passenger:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1is5unz/i_was_on_the_f...

Just to emphasize how insanely lucky they were:

> From inside we didn't see any of the fire, thank goodness! We were all upside down to start with, but many of us were able to release themselves pretty quickly. After that the "upright" of us helped the upside-down until we were all righted and ready to evacuate. We were able to quickly get out the one emergency exit that was safe, the other one poured jet fuel in when they opened it.

> the other one poured jet fuel in when they opened it

welp guess i'm never flying again

Per mine and per hour flying is still much safer than driving

I don't find per mile all that useful when comparing modes of transportation for safety, because for some modes of transportation the risk of a trip doesn't really depend much on the distance.

To give an extreme example, imagine someone starts passenger service from Earth to some planet in the Andromeda galaxy. Each flight carries 100 people. Once the warp field is stabilized the rest of the trip is 100% safe. However when the warp field is turned on their is a 99% chance that it will collapse rather than stabilize, which will destroy the ship and kill everyone aboard.

These Andromeda flights are 5 orders of magnitude safer than commercial air travel when measures by passenger fatalities per mile.

Overall yes, but they do present non trivial medical risks for some people.

Similarly, the risks for specific drivers in specific vehicles making specific trips isn’t the same as the risks for the average driver making an arbitrary trip.

Anyone know the math on how many crashes it would take until this would equalize?

Oh god, there are mines?!

Retention of agency carries a benefit you’re not calculating

[flagged]

Wait until you hear how many car crashes there are per moth and how many fatal hiking accidents. You'll never travel again! That is, until you learn how many people pass away in their own home.

My brother in law, aviation firefighter, said after a crash you have 15s to egress, that's it. There's not a lot of air in the metal tube you're trapped in, it'll fill with smoke and everyone will be disoriented. It's also a long way to the exits, and the average person in the exit row probably will be in shock and likely not operate the exit door immediately.

Absolutely incredible the fireball was put out in the flip, these people are so lucky.

The standard time for evacuating an aircraft that has to be demonstrated for certification purposes is 90 seconds with only half of the exits usable. It generally helps that the fire is (at least initially) outside the cabin most of the time. But yes, I wouldn't bet on conditions in the plane staying survivable for 90 seconds in all cases.

Sounds like plenty of time for me to get my bag, pull out my phone, and start texting

You'll never have a better chance to go viral!

yikes.

Presumably it helped that they crashed into a thick pile of snow in freezing conditions - I imagine that would slow the spread of the fire.

But still, that’s astonishing footage in the Reddit post linked above. Incredible that no one died.

All that snow is going to do next to a jet fuel fire is create a lot of steam.

The crash kicked up a lot of snow into the air, making me wonder if that helped suppress the fireball, as it seemed to die down very quickly. On thing leading to me think this might have happened is video from the recent firefighting in California, where the spray from the firefighting aircraft seemed to snuff out the flames as soon as it descended into them, before it reached the ground.

A fire can be extinguished with diesel (jet fuel is pretty much just cleaner diesel / kerosene) in cold conditions, I know because I’ve done it.

It takes a fair amount of heat / pressure to ignite jet fuel, easier if it’s vaporised.

...and absorbing lots of heat as it evaporates.

There's a reason water is used for firefighting.

Also the wing broke off early so the plane continued away from the initial fireball.

And the fuel spilled both away from the fuselage and onto snow, which both kept the main focus of the fire away from people and limited development of the fireball as well.

Kerosene (Jet-A) is relatively nonvolatile and tends to burn most violently when dispersed in air. It's not quite as heavy as diesel fuel, in which you can extinguish a lit match, but conditions in this incident probably limited flame development considerably.

I say this half-jokingly:

If you're going to rip a wing off do it as early in the crash as possible so momentum will carry you past the fuel/fireball.

If fire develops when you've almost or completely stopped you are now involved in the fire and the fatality rate goes up dramatically.

That was a navy landing. Looks like the landing gear buckled. Also doesn’t look like there was much flaring prior to touchdown.

Or flaps, as is noted in other discussions.

Why doesn't every airport have a bunch of automated cameras around every landing/takeoff strip?

I would assume they do, but it's not exactly in their interest to release footage of catastrophes for public consumption.

I think they do, there was a bunch of footage of the AA collision it just took a little while for it to surface online. People publishing to social media is faster than an investigation

This seems like a really good question. if not for some random dude they wouldn't have any footage of this crash.

There are a plethora of security cameras covering the takeoff area to monitor for obstacles and unauthorized personnel as well as plenty of cameras covering security fences that likely have partial coverage of the interior area... lastly, there are multiple things recording everything the plane does including in the air traffic controller tower and the plane's black box.

Whether the folks controlling these recordings would publicly release them is debatable (especially as it may be seen as being in bad taste due to the trauma these folks experienced and especially especially if anyone had died or ends up dying from injuries sustained).

Holy shit, that was just pure luck that no one end up dead. Based on the video, the plane glide-flipped just enough to slide/roll itself out of the major fire. Things could be a whole lot worse if it played out just slightly differently.

Stop, drop, and roll.

In this case more like drop, roll and stop.

I was thinking this, and also if the airframe had warped enough to prevent the doors opening (maybe this is impossible?).

I'm hoping that's a design consideration!

Boeing solved it by leaving the bolts out of the doors.

Nice video!

No flare, hard landing, landing-gear collapse. Ouch.

The landing gear didn't collapse, the wings ripped off from landing too hard.

Only one wing separated

Either way, it's a write-off and it's not the landing gear's fault.

Does this pilot record lots of landings? Is this standard procedure?

It’s not a procedure but not against the rules assuming his parking brake was on. It would be similar to you taking notes in a personal notebook that you keep as a development journal.

I wonder why were they filming? Was there an early warning? Was it a sketchy landing in any case?

I mean aircraft are fascinating and people film them all the time but wouldn’t expect a pilot sitting in another one to casually film landings.

Maybe just an extremely lucky catch.

Probably just because pilots generally think planes are cool, especially when landing, and there's not much else to do while waiting in line but film them.

Yeah, this guy probably has a library of landing videos.

...after they've completed all their checklists and are ready for takeoff, of course.

As a former aviator, the joke in the business is that a career in aviation is largely stupefying boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.

In Toronto that day, there was a lot of waiting on the tarmac

Lots of pilots know each other and will sometimes film each other's landings just for fun. The original idea was probably along the lines of "Bill's coming in and I have a good angle on it, let's take a video and send it to him." Landing is the hardest part of piloting an airplane and many pilots take pride in their ability to land smoothly.

Slight tangent, if you are on an airplane that lands smoothly despite bad weather and crosswinds, compliment the pilot as you leave the plane. I once offered a "That was a damned impressive landing in this wind" on my way off an airplane and the pilot simply beamed with pride.

I saw the footage, and wondered if perhaps he knew he had a buddy filming him, and there was a “watch this” going on, decided to flare as late as possible, and he just flared… well, stick up after you hit the deck like a sack of potatoes doesn’t do much for you.

Extremely lucky, probably not. More in the sense "under different circumstances, this would have gone into the folder Uninteresting Landings, never to be viewed again." Ubiquitous smartphones mean petabytes upon petabytes of boring photos and videos - the "unusual" part is just in the event itself.

And now we are going to require body cams in everything and AI will sort it out for us

I think most pilots could take one look at that approach and see they were coming in too fast. As many have said, that looked more like a carrier landing than an airstrip approach.

Flight radar shows a normalized approach where speed and altitude conform to that standard. I wonder if late wind shear was the issue.

1100 feet/minute descent rate?

Because of the tricky conditions and great view. Presumably they were waiting for that arrival and it’s not every day you get that view of crosswind landings into such a snowy airport.

The consensus on r/aviation seems to be that it was caused by wind shear.

> This looks like wind shear to me. It was a stable approach and then it suddenly got slammed into the ground. That doesn't look like pilot-induced change in descent rate, it is too sudden for that. A sudden change in wind direction (shear) when that slow can absolutely cause a sudden loss of lift.

> We have had almost 2 feet of snow up here since Friday, and are experiencing wind gusts up to 65 mph. Has basically been a winter hurricane.

> This is a CRJ landing on Runway 23 at YYZ. It is an 11,000’ runway. Winds at the time where gusting from the NE likely north of 30 knots, so this was a cross wind landing. My bet is that it wasn’t the worst situation that any of the pilots had been in. Delta is a pretty good company. Guessing (as a GA pilot and talking to pilots of bigger birds than this —- I know a few). Likely wind shear or wake turbulence. The wake turbulence part would be a reach considering the cross wind component would have blown it away by the time of this landing.

Interestingly, I found a deck of studying cards from Endeavor-Air, for the CRJ 900 limiations [1]. Card 18 states:

    Max allowable crosswind component for takeoff and landing on a runway when the braking action is “FAIR”  =>  20 knots

That also seems to overlap with what is being discussed by CRJ pilots in this reddit thread [2] (EDIT: also discussed today here [3])

If the METAR is correct, they were landing with a crosswind of 28 knots, gusting to 35, on what doesn't look like a "dry" runway. So they might have been over their operational limits here.

[1] https://www.brainscape.com/flashcards/endeavor-air-crj-900-l...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/rf3oqc/landing_in...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/FlightDispatch/comments/1irubk0/cur...

The METAR was 27028G35KT, or 28 gusting 35 from 270° magnetic

However the runway landing was 33, or 330° magnetic.

So this is 24-30kt crosswind component. The maximum landing crosswind on a dry runway is 32kt. The press conference reported the runway as dry, so if they’re correct then it’s within limits. At the reported -9°c if the runway has been de-iced it could be dry I guess?

The surveillance potato camera makes it look like a hard landing on the right main, which is mounted on the wing root. But it’s very low quality and we’re not going to get the first real answers for a month.

> However the runway landing was 33, or 330° magnetic.

They were landing on runway 23.

> At the reported -9°c if the runway has been de-iced it could be dry I guess?

From the NOTAM, the runway condition codes for 23 were 5/5/5, so not dry, but "good".

[1] https://avherald.com/h?article=52439b47&opt=1

5/5/5 would still be good braking action and directional control (it’s out of 6).

FYI: Canadian runways use true north, not magnetic.

The rule of thumb I was taught for crosswind component based on difference between runway heading and wind direction was 60º = 6/6 of the crosswind, 30º = 1/2, 10º = 1/6. So if they're landing on runway 23, 270/28 would amount to (roughly) 4/6 of the wind as a crosswind component, or 19kt.

90º = 6/6, 60º = 5/6, 40º = 4/6, 30º = 3/6, 10º = 1/6 strikes me as pretty accurate.

Doesn't look like a severe crosswind to me, because there seems to be very little crabbing or rudder input, although the camera angles make it hard to tell for sure. You can also see snow blowing on the ground roughly parallel to the runway. I would guess either a downdraft or they forgot to flare or both.

Wake turbulence almost killed someone I knew flying a training jet. He landed after a heavy aircraft and the cross wind was just enough to counter the natural spreading of wake turbulence. There was basically a horizontal tornado over the runway. When he hit it he lost all roll control. He ended up ejecting horizontally across the grass and somehow survived.

I fly a lot and the only time I've ever thought 'this is it' was one time taking off out of Denver International. The airport is out on the plains east of the city and is known for high winds. We were taking off and nose had just started to lift up when a wind gust cause the entire plane to roll to the left. I could see the wing out my window and am still surprised to this day it didn't touch the ground. The pilot corrected, it felt like, by increasing our angle up and we finished taking off sliding a bit sideways.

We were once landing on Madeira, one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Even a nice landing there is quite uncomfortable. For some time you fly very close to the ocean, heading straight into the cliffs, and only in the last moment the plane seems to make a right turn to approach the runway. We made a wobbly touchdown, people already wanted to get up, when suddenly the plane was again lifted a few meters and rolled to the right, only to then slam very hard onto the runway again. When we came to a stop, the pilot commented: "We, errm, have arrived at Funchal, in case you were, errm, irritated about the landing, we were too."

Your description of the landing reminds me of the old Hong Kong Kai Tak airport approach.

You basically had to fly straight over the city, high rise buildings straight ahead, and bank right as hard as the plane would let you at just the right time to hit the runway.

Outside perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKqO6gdJIz8

Cockpit view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx3Ccs5tKfw

I'm from Perth, one of the windiest cities in the world, and had a very similar situation landing once, a few years ago .. seemed like we were on center runway, everything seemed fine for smooth landing, and .. what felt like meters before touchdown, a gust came up and we rolled hard left, the wingtip barely escaping scraping the ground. The pilot corrected the roll and we did a go-around for another attempt, 30 minutes later while the wind settled.

Was such a harrowing experience that, when travelling back home from abroad, I try to fly into Port Hedland and then just take a 10-hour bus ride. (Okay, I admit that I do that mostly so I can get my jet-lag adjusted at the beaches of Shark Bay along the way .. ;)

(Captain then reaches across the cockpit and smacks the First Officer in the back of the head Three Stooges-style)

Unlikely.

They are landing on runway 23, with, from the METAR, wind coming from 270 at 28 knots. That's more than enough crosswind to clear any wake turbulence that could have been there. (See [1])

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225007139_Crosswind...

That was my first thought too.

I've been flipped slideways flying short final (cessna) by a heavy jet that departed 90 seconds prior on a parallel runway. Fortunately I was high enough to recover, but it could have gone very differently.

Wind shear seems more likely this close to the ground, but I'm sure we'll get a nice write-up after the investigation.

experienced a windshear once in malaysia. only feet from the ground during landing. thankfully the pilots kept control and there were only a few bumps and bloody noses as a result (we slammed super hard into the tarmac, could feel.the moment of freefall clearly). this stuff is absolutely terrifying. i can imagine its a moment of total loss of control for a pilot, and having to basically on instinct regain it in milliseconds o.O. crazy stuff.

Watching the video it doesn't look like there was any flaring as you see right above the runway when landing. The approach seemed pretty stable to me and it just slammed into the runway. Some comments on that thread also noted lack of flaring.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cMC5lrE5Zek

65 mph or 65 kph? I was seeing confusion about the units for that number.

The METAR says gusts to 35kt, so about 65 km/h.

Looks like a microburst to me, but same family as windshear

This is a pretty infamous video catching a microburst event on camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_WmjWAGkLI (no injuries),

/r/aviation conversation on this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/295ape/a_not_so_m...

I doubt there was a thunderstorm in the area in the middle of the winter

We’ve had thunderstorms in winter during snowfall Toronto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundersnow

But the snow rates were slow enough yesterday that I don’t think that was happening.

yeah, "middle of winter" wasn't quite right, but the chances of a microburst during what is an otherwise already windy/gusty winter day are basically none

I live nearby the airport and can attest to just how intense the wind was yesterday. I think the idea of a gust makes more sense though, as planes are certainly designed and operated to handle strong winds.

I stitched together a small audio clip from LiveATC with both the Ground and Tower frequencies mapped to the Left and Right audio channels. It starts around the time the aircraft was cleared to land, and then skips forward to the moment the controllers realized the aircraft crashed.

Here is a link to the .mp3 file (it's on Discord for now - I don't know if this is allowed, let me know if it isn't):

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/668315121772134401/13...

Rehosted so it'll stay alive at least a few years: <https://lucgommans.nl/tmp/YYZ_Crash.mp3>. Let me know if you'd like something more permanent than my tmp dump folder, or a filename that gives credits or so! (BTW if you're editing clips, I can recommend exporting to Opus instead of ancient MP3: released in ~2012 so support is very good by now and it's like twice the quality at the same file size, probably even better for speech)

Hey, thank you so much. I shared the Discord file because I was sharing it with some friends, and then thought HN might be interested, but I don't have a more convenient place to serve the file at the moment. Thank you for hosting it.

Good point about exporting to Opus! I used .mp3 because the original audio files were also in .mp3. I've re-exported the file in Opus now, let me know what would be the best way to send it to you.

As for file name and credits, I think it's probably best to credit LiveATC (https://www.liveatc.net/), since that's where I got the original audio and I didn't really do much else beyond separating the channels. The specific files I used are the YYZ Ground and YYZ Tower recordings from February 17th that start at 1900z.

Contact method is in profile (or more directly: https://lucgommans.nl/email), though by now I can't edit the comment and thus link anymore so will have to post a new comment and kill the old link if we want to change it. Just let me know, all is fine by me

This is also available via VASAviation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiUC8h4pkcs

The discord link will die soon. The attachment links started expiring at some point last year IIRC.

It'll sort of die, you can't access them directly but if you take the link and paste it into discord (like one with just yourself) then it'll still work.

It makes sense, I don't suppose Discord is particularly interested in being a file-sharing site.

See the comment above about hosting the file in a more permanent way.

It's wild how calm and matter-of-fact he sounds when he says, "This airplane just crashed." I suppose that's the job though!

Listening to an ATC recording of a major accident is always a masterclass in focus and stoicism. Those folks are heroes.

That's incredible. The plane literally turned over and burnt but no casualty. The flight staff must have done as amazing job keeping everyone calm and helped everyone get out of the upside, burning plane.

Footage from inside the plane of a flight attendant clearing passengers. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1irwh9x/...

Lowkey mad at the lady dragging her hand luggage.

"A good landing is when there are no casualties; an excellent landing is when the plane can fly again." This was therefore a good landing.

3 were critically injured, so not “no casualties” but pretty darned close all things considered

"a good landing is one where the people on board can fly again…" even

This makes me feel better about playing Kerbal Space Program.

Per the article, one passenger "was flying to Toronto for a paramedics conference". Maybe there were more conference-goers.

It also looks like a wing has been ripped off. That passengers could survive an accident involving so much force is surprising.

Not only ripped off but if you look at the video it looks like the wings exploded with a ball of fire.

Did it roll after landing or before landing?

True but I have a feeling it might be designed to rip off in this situation.

I'm more surprised the wing rupture didn't cause a fire/explosion because this is where most of the fuel is stored.

3 in critical condition so I read.

I also read everyone is expected to survive. Hope those in critical condition are able to make a full recovery

nit: no fatalities, but definite some casualties.

In a situation like that how the crew handles things makes all the difference. Definitely seems like they did an incredible job

There were over a dozen casualties. The word you want is fatality.

No fatalities. I believe there were some injuries.

Yeah, a similar thing happened in Cork and half the passengers died. The operators were huge clowns though. Of course Delta is a legit operation.

> ...Delta is a legit operation.

Unless you're a checked bag.

Compare this crash to the Emirates crash in Dubai (EK 521, 2016). In the Emirates incident, the passengers stalled the evacuation in order to grab their carry-ons. Many were seen on the tarmac dragging roll-aboards. Here the passengers chose life over property and efficiently evacuated the aircraft.

Elsewhere in the thread is a video showing at least one passenger carrying their baggage. 90+ percent compliance isn't bad though

It was a 777 (much more room) and not upside down, though.

It would be very difficult to get your bags from overhead bin when you are walking on the overhead doors.

All people on board survived that crash as well.

Blancolirio video out today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOYiQG43v64

* Approach seems mostly unobjectionable (reasonable rate of descent, plausible looking approach speed)

* Runway not especially slick

* May have touched down short and left of centerline

Hope for a preliminary report from Canada Transportation Safety Board in a couple weeks.

Pilot Blog as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIhEIUrTLco

He suspects landing speed may have been too low, making it impossible to flare correctly.

(Both channels are former airline pilots.)

Video from a passanger, the hull is upside down!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=617972644350232

I know they need to control any possibility of a fire but man would it be a rude awakening to escape a significant plane crash, release your seatbelt while hanging upside down, make it to the exit door and then get sprayed in the face with cold water on a February day in Toronto.

Better cold water and not PFAS/firefighting foam

edit: apparently Canada banned PFAS in firefighting foam.

The US Forest Service also banned firefighting foam in parks or anywhere where endangered species are found. Now that they're defunded I bet we're gonna get a lot more of that stuff everywhere

Don’t forget OSHA. Those chemicals and nomex turnout gear are a source of elevated cancers in firefighters.

What is it about TDS that causes those affected to insert this topic into every unrelated discussion?

They were flying from Minneapolis though. Maybe that’s just normal February weather for them?

Toronto is a good 20 degrees warmer than Minneapolis right now but we tend not to turn the sprinklers on in February for a little outside fun.

Also plenty of delta flights will layover at MSP.

I recently flew between California and Mexico, with a layover in Denver. I hadn't paid any attention to the whether in Denver, until we were landing on a runway surrounded by snow and it dawned on my that I didn't even have a sweater. If we had to evacuate I'd have been in trouble, but even having a canceled flight could mean spending the night in a hotel there, without warm clothing that I could wear outside.

If I just survived a plane crash that would be the last thing on my mind.

Yeah I'd be fucking shocked but then crazily happy...

One of the two ejected rear passengers in Asiana 214 (neither of which were wearing their seat belt) was unlucky enough to have initially survived, only to be doused in firefighting foam and then run over.

When it's your time to go ...

After feeling like you might have legitimately barely escaped death everything you can feel feels pretty good until the adrenaline high wears off.

ill take that over consumption by fire

And another one

https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1iruc70/vid...

---

On a side note, it is crazy someone would take a selfie video before exiting a crashed airplane.

On a side note, it is crazy someone would take a selfie video before exiting a crashed airplane.

It's literally once in a lifetime, and it didn't look like anyone was in serious danger after they realised they'd survived.

>and it didn't look like anyone was in serious danger after they realised they'd survived

There was fuel gushing from the severed wing, hence why the water spray just above one of the exit doors, and you could see fire trying to flare up. It had the potential to turn catastrophic...or more catastrophic...in an instant.

There was a lot of behaviour that isn't super ideal, for instance people milling right near the plane seemingly to take videos/photos not only restricting the emergency crews but in a danger area.

I get people in shock from a near death experience doing irrational things like that, though. More concerning are the number of people rationalizing it with full clarity and consideration. Like on Reddit the number of people talking about how there is no way they were leaving their carry-on because their laptop has important work, or their bottle of aspirin, etc...just disastrous logic that literally gets people killed. Standing right in the area where emergency crews are trying to stop a plane from erupting into a fireball for that once in a lifetime selfie -- absolutely crazy behaviour.

It's not unusual for people in a plane crash to survive, then die from smoke inhalation because the people in front of them took too long to evacuate the plane.

Per the referenced link, of the 35 serious incidents between 1983 and 2017, there were 3,823 aircraft occupants. In that group, if you either survived or died from smoke/fire, there is a 7.2% chance you died from smoke/fire.

I can't fine tune that number to determine you survived the crash, but then died from smoke or fire, since it did not easily differentiate pre-crash and post-crash fires.

I am not sure I would agree or disagree that it is usual to die from smoke inhalation after surviving a plane crash given the reason that people took too long to evacuate. It just feels like the upper limit of how many people die that way can't be that large since many of those smoke/fire deaths would not be attributable to that cause.

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/Part121AccidentSurviv...

There is a longer version that shows the inside of the plane. The flight attendant decisively and composedly ushering the passengers off the (upside down) plane. Hats off.

https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1891632984500904441/video/1

I have a lot of antipathy towards the passengers who are getting out with their backpacks; if one takes the time to pick up their stuff they are probably in the way, take more time getting out, and could cause the death of other passengers or staff.

Don’t they actually get a heavy sanction? If not, maybe they should. I can imagine people with a suitcase getting prison time.

I think you should acknowledge that you and the person above are reading this sitting in a comfortable chair (or on the toilet), with little stress, good time to think, and the magic power of hindsight.

People just having been in a crash, however, are in a different situation. They've just been thrown upside down, having to release their seat buckles and fall down onto the roof, then being ushered out in panic. Them not behaving perfectly rational should be excused.

Flight Attendants are very well trained and, importantly, practiced at running evacuations. They run drills a couple days a year. They are tested to be able to empty a plane in 90 seconds.

If you want something to happen in an emergency, you either drill it to be instinct, or it won't happen reliably.

And the wing is missing

I think the tail assembly also sheared off.

Here's what the CRJ900 looks like intact: https://d3lcr32v2pp4l1.cloudfront.net/Pictures/780xany/0/8/3...

Tail and/or wing debris can be seen on the left side of this photo (forward of the aircraft nose): https://i.cbc.ca/1.7461358.1739833036!/cpImage/httpImage/ima...

I've been looking for a video of the landing to see how it over turned, but haven't found one yet. I would have expected all airport runways to have multiple security cameras pointing at them t all times in this day and age.

Here is the first video I saw posted on the aviation subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1is1qoy/video_of_...

It looks like he didn't flare, just continued strait in. Maybe they lost visibility?

Very strange. Almost like the altimeter setting wasn't set to the right number?

Doubtful. The radalt should have been screaming "sink rate" or something similar in the cockpit regardless of the pressure setting.

she*

It looks like it tried to land before the runway?

I'm sure they do have video of the crash, but there's really no upside for them to release it. Eventually it'll come out, at the very least once the NTSB report is published.

Takes time to get that released and probably will eventually. Surely someone was plane spotting and got it.

A better view from behind the runway.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1is1qoy/video_of_...

It's always interesting to follow the discussions on PPRuNe https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/664303-delta-cr...

Unverified reports by another pilot are that the plane struck a wing then sort of cart wheeled

Here's some better footage https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1is1qoy/video_of_...

I don't think the "wing struck ground" is really an accurate description based on this footage.

Indeed. Likely a wing tip strike, the right wing was ripped off, then the left wing is of course still flying so its lifting force rolls the plane over until that wing hits the ground. I think it stayed attached, so after that, the plane just slid to a stop. Edit: Saw a video, looks like the pilot flying failed to flare so they just hit the ground really hard but wings level, probably the landing gear collapsed. Not clear what caused the right wing to be removed. In any case, the plane left the frame so you couldn’t see what happened next.

Too late to edit further, but I should add that there could be many reasons for the apparent failure to flare. I did not intend to speculate that the pilot is to blame. That is for the crash investigators to figure out.

Video from a passenger

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=617972644350232

Ok I'm not at all judging, or condemning. But this:

  'I was just in a plane crash. Oh my God,' says one woman who filmed herself upside down in her airplane seat.

Is a goddam surreal sign of the times. Absolutely surreal.

Well, I am judging this at least a little: Why is the first reaction of this passenger to make a video of herself? Makes me wonder if there ever was an accident where first aid was delayed because somebody had to make a video first....

I think theres some tech sway here. Ex: I wonder how technology changes how we recall events and WHEN we recall them. The plane that flipped upside down being a great example. Likely less than 1% of people use a diary to recount insanely major events of their lives. In the 1980s, lets say 80% of people used diaries/journals to recount the events of their lives. That number today is probably less than 1%. But NOW 100% of people use their phones to recount events via video. They dont try to remember what happened, since its there captured at the time of the event. Diaries recount the event after the information has decayed and there’s a minds-eye element to it, so it has additional subjectivity because reading a diary you have to imagine what happened in the past instead of a visual aid.

Apparently everyone survived (at least so far).

/r/aviation thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1irsmp8/airplane_...

Is there a reason why airport cameras seem to always be crappy? You'd think they would be required to maintain high quality cameras with dozens covering each runway to study every aspect of the operation, not just accidents.

Lots of recent incidents with regional bombardier jets. First DC, now this.

Have there been any recent with major commercial jets yet ?

There's all-around been a lot aviation incidents, in the last couple of months.

Less than a week ago, a 737 hit a truck on the runway in Rio de Janeiro, and last Christmas an ERJ E190 was shot down Azerbaijan, followed a few days later by a 737 in Korea smashing into a concrete wall after the end of the runway.

a regional is a major airline if not in name but in practice. they contracted out for delta and are considered commercial aviation for the statistics. they had 80 people on board which is still quite a lot of people... smaller than a 777 sure but still a large bird.

I don't know much, but my guess would be that smaller planes are more prone to both of these issues? The DC problem was a collision between pilots who didn't see each other in time, which seems more likely with a smaller plane, and this seems to be because of wind/traction, which also seems like it would be more likely with a less heavy/large plane?

Smaller planes fly more often, and there's a lot more of them, so statistically they're more likely to be involved in any incident.

The DC collision was an accident waiting to happen, but that airport only serves single-aisle jets and runway 33 can only be used by the smallest of those - like the CRJ and Embraer model.

And in this case, it remains to be seen what caused the unexpected roll.

Regionals are also where the newer pilots work.

Three critical among eight injured, according to https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/local/peel/article/live-updat...

It's going to be interesting to hear how the plane ended up flipped upside down. There's ice on the ground so maybe a skid on braking resulting in hitting something near the runway causing the flip.

The lift generated by the remaining wing flipped it.

Not-insignificant winds may also have played a factor.

It's been extremely windy in the region today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c0q080y02xgt

Also, posted later as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43083016

https://liveandletsfly.com/delta-crash-toronto/

In terms of mainstream coverage, CBC's is better: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-pearson-overt...

"water machine"

(We eventually merged all these threads, in case the context switch is confusing to anyone)

It's mystifying that any airport with commercial service doesn't have cameras with a full view of every runway recording 100% of the time.

You can't steal a catalytic converter without being on video. We have webcams placed behind eagles' nests in our national parks. Yet somehow we have no recordings of plane crashes at our airports.

Then of course there's the lack of cameras on the planes themselves...

Why do you assume no footage exists? Why do you assume that any footage the tower has should be released to the public immediately?

Well, it seems that there have been several crashes over the last few years where no on-site footage surfaced... whether there's any of this one or not.

Footage existing and footage being released to the public are two different things.

I understand there is a public Voyeur interest in seeing crashes, but how does releasing footage of accidents aid investigation or safety outcomes?

It can aid pilots, for one thing. I watch air-safety/accident-analysis videos all the time. They are often extremely informative and promote a safety-oriented mindset and the refreshment of one's commitment to procedure.

I also read scuba-diving accident reports. They reinforce best practices that I also explain to others in the context of what I've seen in said reports over and over.

Considering how much effort it takes the NTSB to reconstruct the chain of events from the crash site and flight data recorder, any high-resolution video could be very valuable. In particular I think all airliners should have 4K "dashcams" considering how inexpensive the technology now is.

Crashes aside, a high-res Tower view would also make a great live webcam for enthusiasts to watch while listening to LiveATC.

It happens to be that another pilot from a plane waiting to take off form the very same runway was filming the approach [1].

Purely by chance we have HD footage. It does make a huge difference and I agree with the sentiment that this would make flying safer.

[1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGNgCI0MC68/

Well... we have door-shaped footage that might be HD vertically, because he had his camera turned the wrong way.

That's the first clear footage that I've seen (i.e. from an angle not obscured by smoke). To me it looks like the plane touched down with a slight tilt to the right, then the rear landing gear buckled (possibly -- those might be snow dunes obscuring the actual position of the runway) causing the right wing to hit the ground and break off. Then the plane continued to slide on its side for a second before tipping upside down.

Others are saying the plane hit the ground quite hard, I have no frame of reference to judge that.

There’s a video posted elsewhere in this discussion [0].

Looks like the plane landed incredibly hard and the gear buckled. Extreme wind shear?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1is1qoy/video_of_...

That post was removed by the /r/aviation mods so (at least on mobile) it can't be viewed directly on the new UI. But if you switch to old.reddit.com it's still there.

> Looks like the plane landed incredibly hard and the gear buckled. Extreme wind shear?

Quality is not good enough to tell for sure, but to me, looks like wind shear causing a tail strike followed by gear buckling

the Navy pilot jokes showed up fast in that thread

That link seems to have been taken down by reddit mods now.

Thanks for the link.

Yes, that's technically video I guess, but it's trash and doesn't look like the camera was set up to capture takeoffs and landings. More like a utility shed and road... at '90s webcam frame rates and quality.

Any such cameras would have to be operating in a full range of weather, temperature, and lighting conditions, and would need to have power/data infrastructure run out to it around/under runways. Plus you'd need dozens of the things, all of the networking infrastructure to support them.....this isn't going to come out looking like Hollywood. Have you ever worked with security cameras or footage anywhere?

Hahah, wow, who was offended by those easily-verified observations?

"You can't steal a catalytic converter without being on video." Wait! Tell us about your experiences with catalytic converters!

Also, I've flown a lot of Korean Airlines flights where they have front, down and side view cameras that you can watch on the entertainment console. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before more airlines adopt it.

Thieves stole mine in 2020. It was a Mitsubishi Carisma from 1996. They steal them because it’s fast and they contain expensive metals.

There are videos of thieves stealing them on YouTube, but we don’t have any footage.

This is about 20 years old tech.

Most cabins today have CCTV cameras on board.

Others have answered this well, but a more interesting question to me is why we don’t have video of the flight deck recorded on flight recorders. We have the technology to do that reliably.

It’s an interesting privacy concern really. Pilots don’t like the idea, somewhat understandably, who wants to be watched at work every minute of their day? But then it’s also a safety benefit and maybe that’ll win out eventually (this question does keep getting raised on certain crashes).

Given that control inputs and maneuvers are all captured by the data recorder, what would you expect to gain from video of the cockpit?

Simple: additional context.

There is footage.

Major respect to the first responders and passengers who helped each other

...and those that made sure they took their hand-carries off with them.

Nb: I do know that the actual condition of 'shock' will sometimes induce irrational behaviour.

Is it possible that it was actually safer to grab it? Like if these items were stowed under your seat, then the plane flipped and now they’re in the “aisle”. Maybe picking it up actually clears the path? Maybe leaving it behind causes someone else to stumble?

How is it possible for a plane to be flipped like that? This is terrible..

It was gusting 40 to 70mph at yyz today, RJ9 has a max crosswind landing limit of 32mph... de-crabbed a plane that size on ice in heavy wind, interesting choice.

Cross-winds are bad. I was in Vancouver once flying to Victoria with a co-worker. We were supposed to take a helicopter but the winds were too bad so we caught a plane. Taking off, I'm pretty sure a wing just missed a ground and we looked at each other. Things were OK but it was probably the roughest flight I ever had.

Too windy for a helicopter does not inspire plane flying confidence! Scary!

AVherald has a page for this already: https://avherald.com/h?article=52439b47&opt=0

VASAviation has a short stitch of relevant recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiUC8h4pkcs

Totally different speculation than wind shear and that is the whiteout condition of the runway / area. I am also curious about the radalt.

Aviation A2Z reporting that this was a no-flap landing due to a flap actuator failure. Hard to tell in the videos posted if that is the case, but would explain the hard landing.

What on earth is going on?!

I'm quite sure I have heard about more plane accidents in the last two years than in the entire fourty years of my life before that. This is absurd.

too many aircraft accidents these days

what's the root cause

There are fewer and fewer accidents per passenger-mile every year (allowing for some noise because they are rare events)

You're just hearing about it more because there are more planes than ever before, and more media exposure than ever before.

Unfortunately this year is well on track to be a significant increase in the casualty rate from commercial aviation even if nothing happens for the next ten months. While a lot of progress has certainly been made it is concerning that the trend is moving in the wrong direction.

There have always been many: https://hollywoodlife.com/feature/how-many-plane-crashes-202...

Its only commercial airline crashes in the USA that are vanishingly rare. Once you expand scope to all types of planses or the world as a whole you get a lot more.

The Red Army Faction effect.

gravity

Has anyone found the wings yet?

1) Descent rate was way too high. 2) No ‘flare’ 3) left wing angled upward forced right landing gear to absorb all force, resulting in hard shock to the body and then ground roll, tearing off both wings. 4) If 1-3 are true, landing pilot (could be actual pilot or FO) is incompetent 5) Thank god everyone got out alive

I've not seen any video of the crash. Usually, when there's a crash, dash cam or other amatuer video caught it.

Which leads to my repeated bafflement as to why there are no video cameras constantly pointed at flight ops at the airport.

If every 7-11 can have a security cam recording hi-def 24/7, why can't a couple of these be mounted in the tower pointed at the tarmac?

There absolutely are cameras recording the entire airport surface. The people in charge of them don't usually have "I should post this to the internet" as their first thought. Some airports do stream them though.

Video is making the rounds on Reddit now. https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1irzxq...

There often are surveillance cameras on the tarmac. I’ve been involved in many airport surveillance projects with cameras covering the perimeters and operations areas. They just might not want to publicize the camera coverages.

Pretty sure the video exists, it just hasn’t been released to the public.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/s/GtFe8WfUQO

It came down really, really hard, gear collapsed asymmetrically it seems, causing it to roll to the side and sheer one wing off then start rolling.

And FWIW, the conditions of the runway were, by all reports, excellent. It was considered "dry" conditions.

How do you know there aren’t any?

It seems a lot more likely the security managers aren’t in a hurry to release them to the public.

It also just takes time for those videos to get uploaded and spread. We already have 2 good videos from the approach end of the runway; one released by TMZ from a CCTV camera and one from a pilot waiting for their turn to take off.

Best one so far is this one from the next in line plane that would have taken off next: https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1isabv4/another_a...

Usually the video is shot on a phone with the camera oriented the wrong way, and the plane always goes behind a structure just before impact.

But that doesn't stop breathless click-bait headlines proclaiming that the crash was "caught on video."

If SpaceX can put rockets that produce live feeds of a craft re-entering the atmosphere, we should definitely have dashcams in every cockpit. Wing/tail tips would be cool too even if just to have those seatback screens have actual images. Then again, we still can't definitively say what happened to MH370.

Seems like it crashed pretty far away from any residential areas

This is decent.

https://x.com/Tr19192/status/1891579967042908439/mediaViewer...

The plane is.. upside down?

Damn so many airplane crashes in the last 12 months ... pretty sure a lot more then the norm!

yep, it's caused by Baader–Meinhof

So many in the last 6 weeks!

more like four weeks

Noticing number of major planes incidents suddenly over last few weeks ...

I would love to see an analysis of whether airplanes are still the safest way to travel if windowed to the past 30 days.

Yes, but so far no theory or link about the new administration

Maybe we should build more railways. The ground is more stable than the air.

Just because the ground is more stable than the air doesn't mean there aren't train collisions.

Air travel actually has a lower fatality rate per mile than trains do. Rail crossings can be dangerous places.

There's about a million times more ground accidents than air accidents

HN is full of clickbait messages like this. US and Canada can use a lot more trains, but air transport is more suitable for medium to long distance, such as this Minneapolis-Toronto route. They are complementary.

The accident occurred on the ground, any aircraft is susceptible, “more trains” doesn’t make it less so.

It's wild to me that this is at the top of Hacker News, but not even on the Google News front page.

I feel like major airline crashes are usually headlines.

I think there's a fascination in the amount of hardware and software engineering that goes into making a bunch of metal tubes and curves that weight 100,000+ lbs able to fly at 30,000 ft for hours. And we get very upset/interested when these things fail.

>I feel like major airline crashes are usually headlines.

Not really, how many of these accidents from last year do you recognize?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

It gets all over the news when a whole lot of people die, for evident reasons.

Google News is pretty awful nowadays. I feel like Google stopped caring about it years ago.

> I feel like major airline crashes are usually headlines.

The problem is everyone seems to have survived

Google news stopped linking/showing Canadian news sites after some law was passed around financial compensation.

Likely because there was no casualty, which doesn't really make headlines.

On the other hand, the concentration of people who are interested in planes/flights are definitely higher on HN than something as generic as Google news

Sadly, the lack of morbidity because there's no dead people makes it not top news elsewhere.

It’s on all the news sites in Canada.

Yeah, that's surprising... And I think this feels like something people would want to know about

HN has a particular fascination with aviation disasters. No disrespect at all, I've learnt more about aviation here than anywhere else. Before I came here I just assumed the whole thing to be magic.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Or was it because they got rid of the DEIcers?

People are finally getting acclimated to the crash rates we were used to back in the old days.

Confidence and trust in flying at an all time low. DAL about to dip at MO tomorrow. Airlines about to get a massive bailout, again.

Starting to wonder of subtle hacking is involved.

The "subtle" hacking is removing the regulations requiring safe maintenance and procedures, removing people responsible for maintaining and implementing the regulations, and removing the people responsible for controlling the traffic safely.

In a highly complex system, all the hacking you need is to allow the ordinary chaotic systems to run more wild and stochastic errors will degrade the system with less traceability than "subtle hacking" — it's hiding in plain sight.

When Facebook or Twitter "Move Fast and Break Things" the consequences are a few users can't use a feature for a while until they notice the issue and patch it.

Do the same with the air transport or health care systems and you start filling morgues.

[flagged]

> so poor regulation could possibly be implicated.

This has to be one of the dumbest takes out there. Try to work out what could have been cut on the US regulation side that would have caused a crash in Canada such a short time later.

Do you think maybe delta just stopped following the law and let some children fly the plane? Or maybe decided to stop doing maintenance?

Seriously, what is the model here that makes any sense at all?

> so poor regulation could possibly be implicated

Can you work out the logical connection for someone who wouldn't understand it?

Well based on your post they're apparently unrelated.

How did the plane flip? Do we have any reason to believe it could be reasonably avoided with regulations?

This was landing in a 30+ mph crosswind in one of the smallest commercial passenger aircraft

I’m truly sick and tired of how unsafe flying in the US has become.

Concerning

> I don't understand why...

Spend some time talking to a Libertarian zealot. Not saying that you should believe any of their assertions. Let alone adopt their worldview. But you might get a sense of how less-government-is-always-better "logic" works.

Is the particular issue here something that would be solved by more FAA staffing? Typically "give more money and headcount to the bureaucracy that is supposed to prevent this issue" is not actually an effective way to solve a problem, and a more intelligent approach is needed. IMO they need to be looking at more automation and less ATC headcount anyway. That DC crash wouldn't have happened if the pilots had a continuous data feed and collision prevention algorithm rather than relying on people in the control tower calling them and telling them do you see "the plane?"

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