Canadian authorities released a preliminary report Thursday finding the crew of Delta Flight 4819 faced several challenges before the plane hard-landed and flipped on a Toronto runway last month, one of a string of recent high-profile aviation accidents that have led to increased public scrutiny on air travel.
TSB of Canada senior investigator Ken Webster provided an update from the airfield days after the ... [+]
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada released Thursday its preliminary report into the crash of Delta flight 4819, operated by regional carrier Endeavor Air, which flipped and caught fire at Toronto Pearson airport after a hard landing in gusty conditions on Feb. 17.
The crash resulted in no fatalities among the 76 passengers and four crew members and, within three days after the crash, all 21 injured passengers initially transported to local hospitals had been released.
The report details how the crew faced wind gusts up to 35 knots and landed hard without flaring the nose of the plane up to ease the landing.
TSB said preliminary data from the flight data recorder showed the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) sounded an alert “sink rate” 2.6 seconds before touchdown, indicating a high rate of descent.
Delta Air Lines has offered $30,000 to each passenger on board the Mitsubishi CRJ-900 regional jet, for a total of $2.3 million if everyone on board accepts the offer.
Delta said in a statement it remains “fully engaged as participants in the investigation” and will refrain from public comment “out of respect for the integrity of this work that will continue.”
The cause of the crash remains under investigation as Canadian authorities work to determine the exact sequence of events, with a final report not expected for up to a year. Until then, the cause of the crash is undetermined. TSB Chair Yoan Marier said accidents “rarely stem from a single cause” and instead are often “the result of multiple complex, interconnected factors.” The TSB’s preliminary report details that the first officer was flying the plane at the time of landing and had worked with Endeavor Air, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, for a little more than a year. At the time of the crash, she had accumulated 1,422 hours of total flight time — just under a third of which were on the CRJ plane involved in the crash. Upon touchdown, “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,” according to the report. A brief video summary from the TSB released Thursday said further analysis would be done as authorities examine the certification of wing structure, hard landings and pilot training.
“It seems clear from the preliminary report that the first officer negligently piloted and slammed the plane into the ground at a high sink rate of over 1000 feet per minute and at a bank angle of 7.5 degrees to the right. This likely led to the collapse of the right main landing gear that we all saw on the video of the crash. Our client has suffered significant injuries because of Delta’s negligence,” said Andres Pereira of Austin, Texas.-based DJC Law, which represents a passenger now suing the airline.
The Montreal Convention 1999 (MC99) governs all international flights between countries that have signed the treaty, including the U.S. and Canada, and establishes airline liability in the case of death or injury to passengers.