A passenger on board Delta Flight 4819 is sharing what happened in the final moments leading up to its crash on Monday.
John Nelson spoke to CNN about the incident, which occurred as the plane landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport after departing Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The plane, operated by regional subsidiary Endeavor Air, had 76 passengers and four crew members onboard.
“It was a typical flight from Minneapolis to Toronto. And we were coming in, and I did notice the winds were super gusty. The snow had kinda blown over the runways. So coming it was routine but it was noticeable that the runways were in kind of a weird condition,” said Nelson about the crash that happened at approximately 2:45 p.m. local time.
“And when we hit, it was super hard…we hit the ground and the plane went sideways and I believe we skidded on our side and flipped over on our back. Where we ended up there was a big fireball on the left side of the plane,” he continued.
Nelson said that after the plane went sideways, he was “upside down” and that “everybody else was there as well.” He added similar sentiments in a video shared with CNN, which was filmed while the passengers were offboarding.
“Thankfully everybody was okay. We tried to get off as quickly as possible. And shortly thereafter, there was another explosion, but luckily, the firefighters got out of there,” said Nelson.
The Federal Aviation Administration previously said “all 80 people on board were evacuated” from the plane.
A Delta spokesperson said that while no deaths had been reported, initial reports showed “18 customers with injuries have been transported to area hospitals. Our primary focus is taking care of those impacted.”
Deborah Flint, CEO of Pearson Toronto Airport, shared during a press conference on Monday evening that there were 17 injured passengers who “were quickly taken to local area hospitals.”
“At this time, we do not know of any of those passengers having critical injuries. We immediately halted further arrivals and departures on our remaining three runways,” said Flint. “Those runways were reopened at approximately 5 p.m. the other runways are remaining to serve the investigation, which will be carrying forward for the rest of tonight and into the next several days.”
