Delta offers $30K to passengers after fiery crash landing in Toronto

ATLANTA - Delta Air Lines is offering each passenger $30,000 after they survived their jet bursting into flames and flipping upside down as it tried to land in Toronto on Monday. 

What they're saying:

"Delta Care Team representatives are telling customers this gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights," the airline said in a statement to FOX Television Stations. 

RELATED: Delta plane upside-down after Toronto crash; all passengers 'accounted for'

"We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries," Deborah Flint, CEO of Greater Toronto Airports Authority, previously told reporters.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a previous statement that "the hearts of the entire global Delta family are with those affected."

The backstory:

Delta Connection flight 4819, from Minneapolis to Toronto, made a hard landing before it lost a wing, burst into flames and flipped onto its roof at Toronto’s airport.

RELATED: Delta plane crash: Passenger describes landing of flight 4819 in Toronto

Although 21 people were injured, all 80 people on board survived the crash Monday.

Delta plane crashes in Toronto 

What we know:

Communications between the tower at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and the pilot were normal on approach and airport officials said Monday was a clear day with normal operations before the crash.

Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken said the runway was dry and there was no crosswind conditions. Audio recordings indicate the control tower warned the pilots of a possible air flow "bump" on the approach. Winds were gusting up to 40 mph (65 kph).

What we don't know:

Investigators and airport officials have been careful to avoid talking about what went wrong when the plane touched down.

Aviation experts said investigators will consider whether the pilot’s actions, potential landing gear problems or weather conditions caused the hard landing.

What's next:

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead the investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. was sending a team to assist.

Delta passengers speak out 

Local perspective:

Peter Carlson, a passenger traveling to Toronto for a paramedics conference, said the landing was "very forceful."

"All the sudden everything just kind of went sideways and then next thing I know it’s kind of a blink and I’m upside down still strapped in," he told CBC News.

Carlson and another man assisted a mother and her young son out of the plane and then Carlson dropped onto the tarmac. Snow was blowing and it "felt like I was stepping onto tundra."

"I didn’t care how cold it was, didn’t care how far I had to walk, how long I had to stand — all of us just wanted to be out of the aircraft," he said.

What's the key to surviving a plane crash?

Dig deeper:

Aviation experts said it was not surprising that all 76 passengers and four crew walked away from Monday's disaster. It's a credit, they said, to advances in plane design as well as a crew that flawlessly executed an evacuation plan.

Fuel tanks are stored in the wings, so the wings are designed to break off in a crash to remove a seriously explosive hazard, Michael McCormick, an assistant professor and program coordinator for air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said. 

Jeff Guzzetti, an airline safety consultant and a former investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, said the seats and seat belts also helped to prevent fatalities. He noted that passenger jet seats are designed to withstand impacts of up to 16 times the force of gravity and that the seat belts restrained the passengers who were suspended upside down as the plane slid to a halt on the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

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