Delta jet descended too quickly before Toronto crash

The Delta Air Lines regional jet that crash-landed and flipped over at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport last month was descending too fast, according to Canadian investigators.

In releasing its preliminary report on the February 17th crash Thursday, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board noted that in the seconds before touching down, the CRJ 900 was descending at a rate of more than 1,100 feet per minute, which is nearly twice as fast as it should’ve been descending.

All 80 people on board the plane survived the crash, even though it flipped over and caught fire as it slid down the snowy runway. Twenty-one people were injured, two of them seriously.

In addition, the plane was banking at an angle of 7.1° to the right, and the pitch attitude was 1° nose up.

The TSB report says that as the plane touched down, the right landing gear fractured and retracted. The right wing then scraped the ground and broke off at the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel that caught fire as the airplane overturned and moved down the runway.

The TSB of Canada’s report does not explain why the plane was descending faster than it should have, nor what role the strong winds may have had in the crash. Much of the information in the preliminary report comes from the aircraft’s flight data recorder. No information from the cockpit voice recorder was released.

The final investigative report is expected in about a year.