Aviation experts say it is not surprising that all 76 passengers and four crew walked away when a Delta Air Lines jet flipped over on a Toronto runway.
Only 21 on board suffered minor injuries when the plane caught fire upon landing on Monday.
While many may wonder how anyone could have survived, experts say it’s a credit to advances in plane design as well as a crew that flawlessly executed an evacuation plan.
“When I first saw (footage of) that aircraft upside down at the airport, I was like: ‘How can that happen? And how can anybody survive that?’” Michael McCormick, an assistant professor and program coordinator for air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, said.
“It was absolutely astounding to watch the people actually climbing out.”
But McCormick and others said the fact there were only minor injuries shows that passenger jet design and engineering has greatly improved over time.
Wings that detach
Fuel tanks are stored in the wings, so the wings are designed to break off in a crash to remove a seriously explosive hazard, he said.
The tail-like fin of a plane known as a vertical stabilizer is frangible — or easily broken — meaning an aircraft that has flipped over can stay flat on the ground and passengers and crew are able to evacuate, he said.
“Aviation is and remains the safest form of transportation,” McCormick said, adding that it was no fluke 80 people were able to walk away from the Toronto crash.
“That is because the safety of aviation is constantly improving.”
Strong seats
Jeff Guzzetti, an airline safety consultant and a former investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, said the seats and seat belts also helped to prevent fatalities.
He noted that passenger jet seats are designed to withstand impacts of up to 16 times the force of gravity and that the seat belts restrained the passengers who were suspended upside down as the plane slid to a halt on the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“ The odds of getting injured or killed in an commercial airline accident is far less than driving in your car,” Guzzetti…
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