This image taken from video provided by CTV shows emergency crews responding at Toronto Pearson Airport after a plane crash, Monday, Feb. 17, 2025. (CTV)
In Monday’s dramatic Delta Air Lines crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport, the regional jet clipped a wing, flipped upside down in the snow and reportedly caused an explosion at the scene. Yet, crucially, all 80 people on board survived, something aviation experts attributed to aircraft design and the responses of the cabin crew and rescue teams.
“Quite a few things went well here,” Graham Braithwaite, director of aerospace and aviation at Britain’s Cranfield University, said in an interview. “The fact that there were no fatalities with an aircraft left upside down on a runway tells you a lot about how the restraints worked, how the aircraft design worked, how the rescue teams responded and how the cabin crew played their role.”
Aircraft design and crashworthiness
Passengers on the plane that departed from Minneapolis described feeling a hard landing before going sideways and skidding, with the plane eventually coming to rest upside down. Video of the crash showed smoke billowing from a snowy runway and a burst of orange flames. Eighteen passengers were transported to hospitals, Delta said.
While investigators are still working to determine why the plane crashed — and a mechanical issue cannot yet be ruled out — engineers design aircraft to be as “survivable” as possible in the case of an accident, Braithwaite said. “For a scenario like this, it’s about minimizing the injury to people on board,” a subset of aircraft design called “crashworthiness,” he said.
“Crashworthiness is what would have made sure the seats didn’t detach from the floors and that the lap belts kept the passengers secure,” Braithwaite said. “But it’s also things like making sure if a passenger hits the seat in front of them, that surface has been made in such a way that it would make it less likely someone would suffer a serious injury.”
Eyewitness accounts suggest that the seat belts did manage to keep many passengers secure in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Pete Carlson, a paramedic who was on the flight, told the public Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) that he found himself “physically upside down” in the aftermath of the crash, before he took his seat belt off. Another eyewitness, John Nelson, told CNN that immediately after the crash, “I was upside down; everybody else was there as well.”
Michael J. McCormick, an associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, also credited aircraft design for the lack of fatalities.
“The fact that 80 people survived an event like this is a testament to the engineering and the technology, the regulatory background that would go into creating a system where somebody can actually survive something that not too long ago would have been fatal,” he told Reuters.
A quick evacuation, and effective cabin crew
Aircraft design also takes into account the need for passengers to evacuate quickly and without assistance, Braithwaite said, noting that the Federal Aviation Administration mandates that any airplane carrying more than 44 passengers must be able to be evacuated within 90 seconds.
However, in this case, the role of the cabin crew was particularly important, given that the plane flipped over.
“The design criteria is you should be able to get everybody off the airplane in 90 seconds or less … but not in an upside-down aircraft. There were more complications in place here,” Braithwaite said.
Videos shared online captured the chaotic aftermath of the crash, with seat cushions and debris scattered across the overturned cabin. Flight attendants walked along what was once the ceiling, shouting for passengers to “drop everything” and exit through an emergency exit door as emergency crews helped passengers crawl out of the wreckage.
In a number of his crash investigations, Braithwaite found that flight attendants had to shout out simple instructions such as “unfasten your seat belts” to work the passengers out of their panic. “It seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but in the panic people experience, it can be hard for people to figure out what to do next,” he said.
Braithwaite applauded the cabin crew members for their quick work in getting everyone off the plane.
“These people put their lives on the line — they’re the last people off the airplane, and I think sometimes we forget that,” Braithwaite said. “They serve us drink and food, and that’s wonderful, but their real function is to keep you safe.”
Eyewitness accounts also suggested that some of the passengers worked to help each other unclip from their seats. Carlson, the passenger who is a paramedic, said he tried to help others on board and could see passengers “checking one another out, making decisions about whether we would help one another with their straps or if by doing that, would they be landing on somebody else?”
Rescue crew response times
The International Civil Aviation Organization’s Airport Services Manual states that the objective of airport fire and emergency services should be to achieve response times “preferably not exceeding two minutes.”
Aviation and local officials have thanked emergency responders, crediting them with a fast response.
“There was no loss of life, and this is in due part to our heroic and trained professionals, our first responders at the airport,” Toronto Pearson President and CEO Deborah Flint said during a news briefing Monday evening.
“Airport emergency workers mounted a textbook response, reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers,” Flint added.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow wrote on social media: “I’m relieved to learn that all passengers and crew are accounted for after today’s plane crash at Toronto Pearson. Thank you to the first responders, crew and airport staff for their quick actions and commitment to keeping everyone safe.”
Braithwaite said it was “a relief that everybody survived.”
“From the pictures, you would expect to see something different, but I think it’s a testament to the incredible hard work from all sorts of people that results were what they were.”
