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All 309 Survive Plane Crash in Toronto

Posted on: Tuesday, 2 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

TORONTO - A jetliner carrying 309 people skidded off a runway while landing in a thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, sliding into a ravine and bursting into flames. All passengers and crew members survived, jumping out of the plane before the fire broke out.

Fourteen people suffered minor injuries in the 4:03 p.m. crash landing of Air France Flight 358 from Paris to Toronto.

The crash took place in a wooded area next to one of Canada's busiest highways, and some survivors said that passengers had scrambled up to the road to catch rides with passing cars.

"The plane touched ground and we felt it was going off road and hitting a ravine and that's when we thought that was really the end of it," said Olivier Dubois, a passenger who was sitting in the rear of the A340 Airbus.

"People were screaming and ... jumping as fast as possible and running everywhere, because our biggest fear is that it would blow up," Dubois told CTV.

Dubois and other passengers said the power went off shortly before landing, perhaps after the plane was hit by lighting. But he said he did not expect a crash landing and that there was no warning from the captain.

"It was very very fast," he said. "As soon as the plane stopped, they immediately opened the side of the plane where we couldn't see anything and they told us to jump."

He said some passengers scrambled onto nearby Highway 401, where cars stopped, picked them up and took them to the airport. Two busloads of passengers were taken to an airport medical center.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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