Air France A340 Crashes in Toronto

It's the only news in Canada this evening. An Air France A340-300 en route from Paris to Toronto touched down at Pearson Airport in a raging thunder and lightening storm and skidded off the runway and ended up in a ravine in two pieces. Fire broke out as over 300 people evacuated the jet successfully and climbed up the ravine and walked out onto the airport ground and the 401 highway. Amazing....

So it's a good news story actually... tragic in that people were probably scared to death at the moment it happened but knowing it all ended in the loss on one aircraft and nothing else was a relief for everyone especially the passengers and flight crew. It could have been so much worse. When I first saw the pictures of the wreckage burning on CNN I was sure there would be deaths. In fact I listened to live radio reports all the way home from work and people were then discussing the remote possibility of survivors so the image I had in my head was of carnage. Thank God the media was wrong. They run with whatever they can get their hands on when they are live and so often totally miss the truth.

For instance in the very beginning people were reporting the plane to be a Westjet 737. Then once it was established to be an Air France A340 the plane's size and passenger capacity went all across the board from 200 to 400 people. Reporters first started saying wind shear brought it down. Then someone said it was struck by lightening because the plane "lost power" just before touchdown. The lights went out apparently which isn't all that uncommon actually. Others said there was no lightening. Then one passenger said the plane made a sudden drop and fell hard onto the runway. This was followed up by someone claiming the plane came in too high. This was followed up with the plane was landing too fast. Another said the landing itself was quite normal if not smooth. One even said passengers broke out and applauded on touchdown. Another said they thought the plane blew its tires so lost braking power. An early report had an engine falling off. Fire supposedly broke out before hitting the ravine. Speculation led to the plane being low on fuel therefore forced to land. One guy had the plane skidding on the "driveway"... Ok they were emotional and I guess were talking out of sheer adrenalin. It must have been horrific.

I've run scenarios like this through my mind several times especially when I fly. I've seen the emergency instructions so often I can almost get up and perform the instructions myself so I listen only out of one ear when they are presented. One thing I always do though is count the number of seats away from the nearest exit I am in case I have to get off crawling on the floor in thick smoke. It never hurts to have a sense of perspective of the exit from your seat. Normally though I'm not sitting around thinking anything like this would really happen. All reports have said that passengers were expecting a normal landing in rain and were not prepared for anything unusual before hand. That's a bit creepy actually to have a placid normal experience suddenly turn into one of your worst nightmares. Now though their most pressing issue will be to see if any of their luggage survived. What an arrival into Canada.. imagine if their passports also were left on the plane.. you enter a foreign land by simply walking onto a highway with literally the clothes on your back. I hope the airline, authorities and local people take good care of the visitors who are now stuck in this situation. I'm sure they will.

So it looks like we should all applaud the cabin crew for getting everyone out with relative safety. Only 17 people had minor injuries. It will be interesting to see the investigation and what comes out of it. Lots of questions will be asked. Why was the airport opened when the weather conditions were so bad? Did ATC do something wrong in their procedures in helping land this plane? Why did the pilots choose to land when there were alternative airports to go to? What exactly happened to the aircraft and what caused it to slip off the runway? Was there wind shear? Did the landing gear wheels blow? Did the engines fail? Did the hydraulics or reverse thrust fail? Was the runway conditions fit for landing? So was there excess water or some debris on it? Was there pilot error? Did the plane get hit by lightening? Was there a maintenance error? Time will tell.

Anyways it captivated everyone for a few hours this evening. I found myself glued to CNN actually. CTV and CBC were ok but CNN of course had the most people on the story and fed into CTV's images and the occasional live report when the story was worth it. It was a repetitious set of video of the plane burning. I was amazed no television crew could get better pictures than what they got. A fuzzy fixed camera from a high position and an unsteady hand held camera from a car... and that was about it looping continually as reporters did voice overs.

I'm anxious to talk to my colleagues tomorrow to see what they saw. Most of them take the 401 past that runway since our office is right near that location. I've taken it myself dozens of times and have landed on that runway about as many times. In fact on my last trip last Thursday that's the runway I took off of. So I'm sure many of them will have driven right past the wreckage this evening. The plane is a write off. Kinda sad seeing the Air France tail surrounded in smoke. A was beautiful plane at the end of its life. It's last flight. Imagine being the passengers waiting for it at the gate for the flight back to Paris... *gulp*... At least though it can be replaced; we can't say that for the passengers. They however all survived :)