WASHINGTON: US airline Delta will offer $30,000 to each passenger on a plane that crashed as it landed at Toronto airport this week, the carrier said on Wednesday.

“This gesture has no strings attached and does not affect rights” of passengers, a company spokesman said.

On Monday, a Delta Air Lines plane that departed from the US city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, hit the runway hard at Toronto’s main airport and flipped upside down.

A fireball and thick plumes of black smoke engulfed the plane as it skidded to a halt on its roof but none of the 80 people on board were killed. Delta said 21 passengers were injured in the accident but only one was still hospitalised as of Wednesday morning.

Paramedic services said emergency responders dealt with various injuries among the passengers, including back sprains, head injuries, anxiety and headaches.

Dramatic footage of the crash posted on social media and verified by AFP on Tuesday showed the Bombardier CRJ-900 coming in to land before slamming into the runway, then sliding forward in a roll, with its wings sheared off before it stopped on its back.

Canada’s Transpor­tation Safety Board launched an investigation, assisted by the US Federal Aviation Administration, Delta and Mitsubishi, which purchased the CRJ line of planes from Bombardier in 2019.

The Toronto crash was the latest in a recent string of air incidents in North America, including a midair collision between a US Army helicopter and a passenger jet in Washington that killed 67 people, and a medical transport plane crash in Philadelphia that left seven dead.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2025