Passengers in Toronto recount moments the plane crashed

Two passengers in the ill fated jet have described what seemed like a routine descent that suddenly turned them upside-down.

All 80 passengers and crew members on board the Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis that crashed and flipped over at Toronto’s airport are expected to survive.

Pete Koukov

Mr. Koukov, 28, a professional skier from Colorado, was on his way to Toronto to film a ski movie. Nothing seemed amiss during the final descent, he said in an interview, until the wheels hit the ground and the plane skidded on its right side.
From his window seat on the left side of the plane, Mr. Koukov said, he saw flames as the plane hit the ground. “I unbuckled pretty fast and kind of lowered myself to the floor, which was the ceiling,” he said. “People were panicking.”

The plane ended up belly side up. He shared footage on Instagram of the moment he and other passengers clambered across seats and out an emergency exit, onto a snow-streaked runway.

Pete Carlson

Mr. Carlson, a paramedic, was traveling to a conference in Toronto. Passengers were told that there had been strong winds, but he said the crash jolted him from what began as a routine descent.

“One minute you’re landing, kind of waiting to see your friends and your people. And the next minute you’re physically upside-down and just really turned around,” he told the CBC, the Canadian public broadcaster. “It was cement and metal.”

After the plane lost a wing and rolled, there was a palpable camaraderie in the cabins. “Everyone on that plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another, and that was powerful,” he said.

He noticed a woman who had ended up under a seat and a mother and a boy who were sitting on the ceiling of the aircraft, which was now its floor. He had no idea what state any of them were in, he said. “My fatherly instinct and background as a paramedic kind of kicked in,” he said, making him focus on ensuring that they all got off the plane.

Read also: Delta Plane Crashes and Overturns While Landing at Toronto Airport

Jet fuel, he said, was running down the airplane’s windows.

Carlson, who had a scrape visible on his head, said that after leaving the plane, he had tried to move as far from it as possible once he noticed that a wing was missing and heard sounds of an explosion. After putting his coat on a fellow passenger, he snapped a photo with his phone and sent it to family, friends and colleagues inquiring about his safety.

“This is my reality right now: down on the tarmac and alive, which is amazing,” he said, recounting how he felt.

A friend who had traveled to the airport to pick him up found his way to the tarmac and began treating others. Passengers with injuries were quickly placed on buses and transported to safety, he said.

“The most powerful part of today was there was just people, no countries, no nothing,” he said. “It was just people together, helping each other.”