Delta flight 4819 originating from Minnesota crash lands at Toronto airport amid strong winds and snowstorm.
All 80 people on board a plane which crashed and overturned while landing in Toronto have survived, officials said.
The Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis skidded along the runway with flames visible and it came to a halt upside down as firefighters came to the rescue.
Survivors said they were suspended upside down in their seats and had to release themselves, dropping on to the ceiling before clambering out on to the snow-covered tarmac.
Eighteen people were injured but only a small number are thought to be seriously hurt, and investigators are looking into what caused the crash.
Passengers have described their amazement after most of them escaped unscathed from a plane that crash landed in Toronto on Monday afternoon.
The Delta flight skidded along the runway in flames before flipping over and coming to a dramatic halt upside down, losing its tail and an entire wing in the process.
Some of the 80 people on board were then left hanging upside down while still strapped to their seats, before they scrambled over luggage to escape onto the snowy runway.
No deaths have been reported after the incident, which is under investigation.
Analysts have suggested the harsh winter weather may be to blame, or that the plane landed badly. They have also credited the plane’s safety features with saving lives.
Twenty-two passengers were Canadian nationals and the rest were “multinational”, Ms Flint said.
The airport was closed after the incident, but flights into and out of Toronto Pearson resumed at about 17:00 local time.
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said it was working to “gather information and assess the occurrence”.
Two runways will remain closed for several days for investigation and passengers have been told to expect some delays.
Toronto Pearson Fire Chief Todd Aitken said “the runway was dry and there was no cross-wind conditions”.
That contradicted earlier reports of wind gusts of more than 64km/h (40mph) and a crosswind.
What caused the airplane to flip upon landing?
Delta flight 4819 originating from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport in the US state of Minnesota crash landed on the runway at about 3:30pm (20:30 GMT) on Monday.
The plane CRJ900 was manufactured by Canadian aerospace company Bombardier. While the aircraft burst into flames, prompting fire crews to extinguish them, the fuselage of the plane remained largely intact. Experts say a plane flipping upside down is unusual, but not unknown. They speculate that this happened due to the snowy, windy Toronto weather. However, Toronto Pearson Airport had been experiencing weather-related delays over the last few days, with heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures battering parts of Ontario. Aviation expert Scott Hamilton told Newsweek magazine that the strong winds and snow could have played a role in flipping over the plane. He added that flipping can be caused by factors including weather conditions, speed of approach, anomalies in braking and thruster viability.
Two storms – one on Wednesday and one on Sunday – covered the city with a total of 30-50cm (11.8-19.6 inches) of snow. Furthermore, Earlier on Monday, the airport warned that “frigid temperatures and high winds were moving in”.
It said a “busy day” was expected, with airlines “catching up after this weekend’s snowstorm”.
The crash is at least the fourth major aviation incident in North America in the past month.
The worst was a deadly in-air collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter near Washington DC which killed all 67 people on board.
