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It’s still “too early” to draw conclusions about the cause of the Delta Air Lines plane crash at Toronto’s Pearson airport, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Thursday in an update on its investigation as the one-year anniversary of the incident approaches.
The safety board said it’s still working on its final report, and the work done so far includes a “comprehensive” metallurgical examination of the plane’s landing gear and wing, as well as an analysis of flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
“The investigation remains ongoing, therefore it is too early to draw conclusions as to the causes and contributing factors of the accident,” TSB said in a news release.
All 76 passengers and four crew members survived when the plane arriving from Minneapolis burst into flames after flipping over and skidding on the tarmac at Pearson airport on Feb. 17, 2025. Flight 4819 was operated by Delta’s subsidiary Endeavor Air.
The crash sent 21 people to the hospital with various types of injuries.
WATCH | The moment that a Delta Air Lines plane crashed at Pearson:
Video shows moment Delta plane crashed, flipped at Toronto’s Pearson airport
New cellphone video emerges showing the moment a Delta Air Lines plane crashed and flipped over on landing at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport as an investigation gets underway into what went wrong.
The Transportation Safety Board suggested in a preliminary report last March that the aircraft came down at a high speed and touched down hard enough to break its landing gear.
That report did not draw any conclusions, but some aviation analysts noted the data included in it show the plane approached the runway at roughly 1,100 feet per minute — a higher speed than normal.
The preliminary TSB report said the aircraft got a boost of speed as it was descending, likely due to a wind gust. That prompted the co-pilot who was flying the plane to pull back on power, which made it start to slow down, the report said.
It said the plane’s landing gear folded into the retracted position at touchdown and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire as the plane slid along the runway.
The crew and passengers started evacuating once the plane came to a stop, and some of the passengers were injured when they unbuckled their seatbelts and fell to the ceiling. The cockpit door was jammed shut, forcing pilots to escape through the emergency hatch on the ceiling of the cockpit after everyone else was out, the preliminary report said.
In the latest update on its investigation, TSB said it has also analyzed data from Nav Canada and Pearson airport’s surveillance cameras, and looked at meteorological conditions at the time of the crash.
Investigators also conducted “simulator exercises” and the analysis of those simulations is ongoing, it said.
“Future work will focus on finalizing the analysis of all technical, flight operations and laboratory results,” the update said, adding that the final investigation report will be drafted after that.
Multiple passengers have filed lawsuits against Delta Air Lines in U.S. courts. In the days after the crash, Delta offered US$30,000 in compensation to those who were on the plane, saying the money “has no strings attached.”
The airline has said it would fully co-operate with the TSB investigation.
