On Monday, a Bombardier CRJ900 Delta jet flipped over after landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. This is a rare and scary event that happened there. The plane, which had 80 people on board, flipped over, hurting 18, most of whom were only slightly hurt. Fortunately, every person was safely evacuated.
Professionals offered their opinions on the causes of the injuries and the safety actions most likely prevented getting worse of the conditions. Mike McCormick, an air traffic control specialist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, notes that aircraft are designed to manage incidents like these. He said that airplane structures are made so that parts like wings and tails can fall off during a flip. Also, he said, seats are made to withstand forces up to 16 times the force of gravity, which means that people are safe even when the plane is upside down.
Saying that their training is quite crucial in these conditions, McCormick also praised the speed with which the flight crew helped everyone off the aircraft. He raised that flying is safer than it has ever been even if there have been a lot of well-known errors this year.
Arnold Barnett, a flight safety expert from MIT, said that seeing an upside-down plane could be scary, but that the small size of the plane and the fact that people were wearing seatbelts probably kept them from getting seriously hurt. Because the CRJ900’s cabin was only about 6 feet high, people didn’t have much room to fall when the plane crashed.
Because of this accident, experts are telling people to buckle up in their seatbelts, because sudden moves during a crash can seriously hurt people. Mike Shertz, an emergency physician, said that if the plane crashed upside down, people should be careful when they unbuckle and get off the plane because the roof (now the floor) could be full of debris.
Najm Meshkati, a professor of flight safety at USC, said that fire risk was the most important thing to think about during any crash and that quick evacuations were necessary to keep people from dying. People praised Toronto’s emergency response teams for acting quickly and for using fire-resistant foam to keep possible risks in check.
Hassan Shahidi, President of the Flight Safety Foundation, praised the work of the flight attendants and rescue workers and emphasized how well they are trained to handle such situations. Because help arrived quickly, people were able to leave the scene of the accident without getting hurt.
This event serves as a lesson of how important it is for planes to be well-designed, crews to be trained, and emergency plans to be ready in case of rare or unexpected events.
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