Crash video raises questions about what caused Delta plane to flip over
Questions emerge about what may have caused Delta plane to burst into flames and flip over
Witnesses and video from the scene Monday afternoon shows the plane landing so hard that its right wing is sheared off. It bursts into flames before sliding down the runway and flipping over. Miraculously, all 80 people on board the flight from Minneapolis to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport survived.
TORONTO - Compelling new video has emerged of the Delta crash in Toronto, giving a clear view of the events.
Science and luck determined the outcome.
What went wrong?
Witnesses and video from the scene Monday afternoon show the plane landing so hard that its right wing is sheared off. It bursts into flames before sliding down the runway and flipping over. Miraculously, all 80 people on board the flight from Minneapolis to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport survived.
What they're saying:
"This plane is coming extremely fast, or as they like to say in the biz, hot. It landed very close to the end of the runway. It came in very fast, and it just pancaked down on that runway," said aviation accident attorney and pilot Mary Schiavo.
Much of the fire came from the wing.
"Commercial planes (have) wet wings. That's where their fuel is; that's where the fuel is kept," said Schiavo.
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Professor Michael McCormick, who teaches at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, said as the wing broke off the jet, which then rolled over, the wing did what it was designed to do.
"If the forces on the wing are enough to break the wing off, because it's flammable, that fuel source will not be a part of the fuselage. That way, you won't have the fuel in and around the fuselage, and then cause additional risk to the passengers," said McCormick.
In extreme circumstances, wings and tail structures are designed to separate from airliners in crashes, especially in the extremely rare event of a rollover.
"You see it turn and the right-wing break-off and this huge explosion. So, we know the wing separated at that point. It's the luck of the draw as to how it came out," said Schiavo.
Aircraft wings are remarkably flexible to handle the constant buffeting they encounter in flight. In Airbus test video, an airliner's wing is pulled 17 feet up from its normal flying position to ensure even the strongest turbulence will not separate it from the rest of the plane.
A key question is why the experienced pilots attempted to land in severe weather.
"Some of the reports put the wind above this aircraft's ratings for cross-wind landings. I'm predicting that they will say that this wasn't a stabilized approach, and the pilots should have broken off, gone around, and tried it again," said Schiavo.
Neither Schiavo nor McCormick saw a closely related commonality in the recent spate of aviation mishaps.
The Source: Aviation accident attorney and pilot Mary Schiavo, Michael McCormick of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Associated Press and previous reporting.