“Mass chaos” is how one Minnesotan aboard the Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Toronto described the immediate aftermath inside the jetliner that crash-landed Monday afternoon.
“I did notice the winds were super gusty,” 47-year-old John Nelson, of Bayport, told CNN in an on-air interview. “The snow had kinda blown over the runways. It was routine, but it was noticeable that the runways were in kind of a weird condition.”
As of Tuesday morning, of the 21 injured passengers that were taken to a nearby hospital, all but two have been released, according to Delta.
No fatalities have been reported as aviation agencies investigate what led to the crash of the CRJ-900 aircraft operated by Endeavor Air, a wholly owned regional subsidiary of Delta that is based in Minneapolis.
Delta Flight 4819 departed the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport shortly after 11:34 a.m., about an hour late, according to FlightAware.com. It crashed in Toronto at about 2:15 p.m. EST, according to Delta.
“When we hit, it was super hard,” Nelson continued. “We hit the ground and the plane went sideways, and I believe we skidded on our side and flipped over on our back.
“Where we ended up there was a big fireball on the left side of the plane. It was mass chaos.”
Everyone in the fuselage came to rest upside down, he told the network.