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'The Plane Was on Fire and Smoke Was Pouring In

Posted on: Thursday, 4 August 2005, 12:00 CDT

An investigation began last night into an aviation 'great escape' which saw all 300 passengers - including seven Britons - survive a plane crash at Toronto airport. Miraculously, everyone on board the Air France plane managed to get clear before flames and smoke engulfed the aircraft which had gone off the end of the runway in bad weather at Pearson International Airport.

Casualties, incredibly, were restricted to 43 of the Airbus A340's passengers. They suffered minor injuries and were treated in five Toronto hospitals.

The Foreign Office said none of the Britons on board the flight, which had taken off from Paris, were hurt.

With the crew and passengers available for interview as well as many other eye witnesses, aviation experts believe the investigators will establish the cause of the crash very quickly.

'They should get to the bottom of this pretty soon because they have so many people to talk to and items they can study,' said Chris Yates, aviation safety analyst for Janes Transport.

'Investigators will want to look at the weather conditions, the radar data, the pilot's conversation with air traffic controllers and the runway conditions.

'They will also want to know if the pilot, perhaps low on fuel, had no option but to land and if the runway has been inspected.'

Mr Yates added, 'The pilot might have found that having touched down, he had no braking power because of the surface water on the runway. International aviation regulations require that runways should be inspected in bad weather by having a vehicle driven up and down on them. Was an inspection done ?'

The investigation - by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada - will also look at the possibility that the plane, with 297 passengers and 12 crew aboard, could have been struck by lightning.

There is also speculation that a sudden gust of wind could have increased the groundspeed of the plane on touchdown or increased its airspeed while coming in to land.

As the investigation began, survivors, who included more than 100 Canadians and more than 100 French citizens, told their stories.

They spoke of how they had clapped and cheered as the plane touched down at Toronto, having had to fly in circles above the Canadian airport because of the bad weather.

But the euphoria was quickly replaced with fear as the plane skidded off the end of the runway, which is situated alongside the city's busy Highway 401.

Passenger Gwen Dunlop, returning to Canada from a holiday in France, said, 'It happened so quickly - it was a little bit like being in a movie.

'At some point the wing was off. The oxygen masks never came down. The plane was filling up with smoke.'

She said one of the flight attendants tried to calm passengers and tell them that everything was OK.

'And yet the plane was on fire and smoke was pouring in. I don't like to criticise, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared.'

Ms Dunlop said some passengers went down emergency chutes, while others just jumped out on their own.

The plane had skidded into a ravine in a wooded area off Highway 401, the busiest freeway in Canada. Passengers scrambled up the ravine in the pouring rain, ducked beneath a bridge and climbed into an abandoned truck, worried the plane would explode.

'We were all trying to go up a hill. It was all mud and we lost our shoes. We were just scrambling, people with children,' Ms Dunlop said.

The A340, whose wings are made at Airbus UK's plant at Broughton, North Wales, had been delivered to Air France in September 1999, had flown 24,418 hours and completed 3,711 take-offs and landings.

Air France senior executive vice president, Jean-Francois Colin, said that the two pilots and cabin crew were all experienced Air France staff. The 57-year-old captain had joined the airline in 1982 and had logged more than 15,000 flight hours, including 1,800 hours on Airbus A340s.

The 43-year-old co-pilot had been with Air France since 1985 and had logged 10,700 flight hours, 2,500 of which were on Airbus A340s.

Mr Colin said, 'Air France is paying homage to the entire crew: to the captain, to the first officer (co-pilot) and to the cabin crew. Their calm and professionalism have prevented a drama.

'Before being hospitalised, the first officer made a last check around the aircraft to make sure that no passengers remained on board.': 'Ground accidents of this kind now much more survivable':Runway accidents such as the Air France crash in Toronto are now far more survivable thanks to a strengthening of regulations and procedures. Twenty years ago, 55 people died when a British Airtours plane burst into flames as it prepared to take off from Manchester Airport.

Yet all the passengers and crew of the Air France Airbus A340 escaped with their lives in Canada on Tuesday night.

'Things have really moved on in recent years and ground accidents of this kind are now much more survivable,' said a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

He went on, 'There have been some big steps taken in making the interior of aircraft more fire-resistant.

'One thing that has been introduced is floor-level emergency path lighting so that passengers can follow a line along the cabin floor if smoke reduces visibility.

'Cabin seats are now far more flame-resistant and airlines have revised and strengthened their emergency procedures.'

For manufacturers and operators of European planes to receive their certification to enable them to fly, they must prove to aviation regulators that their aircraft can be evacuated within 90 seconds.

Regulators would have to be convinced there were sufficient emergency exits and that proper equipment and procedures were in place to meet the 90-second deadline.

For many years after the August 1985 Manchester disaster, there was a clamour for passenger smoke hoods to be introduced.

But the CAA never did approve such a scheme. The CAA spokesman said yesterday, 'This latest Toronto incident emphasises the need for passengers to get out of the plane as quickly as possible.

'The difficulty with smoke hoods is that it would take time for people to put them on in an emergency. We have ruled them out completely.' The CAA said it would absorb any recommendations that might come out from the inquiry into the Toronto crash.

Source: Western Mail

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