TRAGEDY: 18 injured after plane crashes, flips at Toronto’s Pearson airport……See More

Passengers recount being upside down after Monday’s Delta Air Lines plane crash

Video posted to social media by several passengers show the fraught moments after a plane crashed and flipped on its back at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon. ‘I was just in a plane crash. Oh my God,’ says one woman who filmed herself upside down in her airplane seat.

A plane crashed and flipped on its back at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon, injuring 18 passengers, officials say, following a weekend of heavy snowfall that led to flight delays and cancellations.

All 76 passengers and four crew members on the Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Toronto were accounted for, said Deborah Flint, president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA). There were 22 Canadians on board, she added. The other passengers were multinational.

“We are very grateful there was no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” Flint told reporters, adding that the quick response was due to the “heroic” first responders at the airport.

We are very focused on the care and the concern and the passengers and the crew, some of whom have already been reunified with their friends and their families. Others we have in a comfortable place right here at the airport in an environment where they’re getting a lot of care and support from my staff.”

In an update on Monday night, the GTAA said 17 injured people were taken to hospital immediately and another was transported later. Delta Air Lines also said in an update on Monday evening that 18 people were injured.

Peter Carlson, a passenger on the Delta plane who was flying to Toronto for a paramedics conference, said in an exclusive interview with CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault that the landing was a “forceful” event where all of a sudden everything went sideways.

“The next thing I know, there was kind of a blink, I was upside down and still strapped in,” he said.

“It was cement and metal,” he added. “The absolute initial feeling is just need to get out of this.”

The number of injured has fluctuated in reports since the crash occurred. Earlier, Peel Regional Paramedic Services, which services Mississauga, Ont., where the airport is located just outside Toronto, said 15 passengers in total were hurt, after initially saying it believed eight people had been injured.