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Survival By More Than 300 Air France Passengers in Toronto Called Miraculous

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 August 2005, 00:00 CDT

TORONTO (CP) - More than 300 people, some scrambling to flag down motorists on a nearby highway, escaped with their lives Tuesday after an Air France passenger jet skidded off a runway at Pearson International Airport, slid into a wooded ravine and burst into flames during a fierce thunderstorm.

Only 43 of the 297 passengers and 12 crew members aboard Air France Flight 358 from Paris sustained what were mostly minor injuries in the dramatic crash, which unfolded shortly after 4 p.m. ET right in front of commuters at the peak of the daily rush hour.

"It happened so quickly," said Gwen Dunlop, a Toronto resident who was on the flight on her way home from a summer vacation in France.

"It was a little like being in a movie. It was scary, because it did land OK for a few seconds and we actually clapped - we clapped because we were down. We clapped and only seconds later there was a big, big (impact)."

Seconds later, the cabin rapidly began to fill with smoke as passengers scrambled to get off the plane, Dunlop said.

"At some point the wing was off and it was smoking badly," she said. "The oxygen masks never came down. The plane was filling up with smoke."

Many passengers, including one of the co-pilots, escaped the wreckage in the moments after the crash and climbed out of Etobicoke Creek ravine and on to the highway, said Peel police Sgt. Glyn Griffiths.

"We located the co-pilot on Highway 401," Griffiths said.

Passengers were buffeted with heavy rain and howling winds as they scrambled up the muddy banks of the ravine in an effort to get to safety - and away from the flaming wreckage.

"There was the fear of the explosion because we were all trying to go up a hill that was all mud," she said.

"We had lost our shoes, we were just scrambling, and there were people with children. The rain was just coming down, and the wind and the lightning. We were just thrown into the weather and thrown into everything. There were people climbing over seats to get out."

Everyone on board the Airbus 340 jet, which is capable of carrying 350 passengers, was able to get off the plane before it caught fire. It was the first crash for an Airbus 340 in 13 years of commercial service.

"We are very, very satisfied that there were no fatalities and no major injuries," said Steve Shaw, a spokesman for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, which manages the busy international airport.

"The passengers were able to clear the aircraft before the fire broke out, but that's an unconfirmed report," Shaw said.

Several area hospitals braced for an onslaught of injuries that never came. A one-year-old baby was taken to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children for smoke inhalation, and would likely be kept overnight for observation.

Another 13 people were taken to William Osler Health Centre in Etobicoke, west of Toronto, and two others to the Peel Memorial Emergency Department in Brampton, to the north. No details of their condition were made available.

At about 8:30 p.m. passengers wrapped in red blankets were taken to an airport hotel and reunited with their families. Most seemed composed, despite their harrowing ordeal.

For many hours, flames and black smoke could be seen shooting from the downed plane's broken fuselage.

Moments after the aircraft crashed 200 metres at the end of the runway amid lightning strikes and driving rain at 4:03 p.m., dirty smoke billowed across the landscape, obscuring the view for passing drivers as the acrid smell of burning jet fuel hung heavy in the air, even several kilometres away.

Jennifer McCluskey, 22, was watching the storm from her office window when a loud roar from the vicinity of the airport told her something was terribly wrong.

"All of sudden I hear this roar, and I look over and it was the Air France plane and it just kept going off the runway," McCluskey said.

"It seemed like it was in slow motion. And it cleared the runway and went into the gully and exploded, burst into flames . . . as soon as it went into the gully, it burst into flames."

McCluskey and her co-workers said it seemed to take a long time for emergency vehicles to arrive on the scene.

"It seemed like an eternity," she said. "We were all just awestruck. Everybody had the same reaction. Everybody just wanted to cry."

The fact no one was killed in the crash was "miraculous," said acting Peel police Sgt. Craig Platt. "It's a relief there are no fatalities."

Air France issued a statement saying it was making arrangements to help families stranded in Canada.

"Air France is doing everything possible to take care of the passengers of this flight and bring the necessary assistance to their families and loved ones," the airline said.

Passenger Roel Bramar said he saw lightning in the sky as the plane was descending.

"Just as we landed, the lights turned off and that's unusual," Bramar reported. "The captain wanted to lower the plane as quickly as possible."

Glenn Schiller, a passenger in a plane that had already landed on the tarmac, watched the scene unfold.

"At the time the rain was coming down sideways," he said. "It was a vicious, vicious thunderstorm."

Thunderstorms create the possibility of wind shear - the sudden, dangerous air currents that can push an aircraft into the ground during takeoff and landing. It was not immediately apparent whether the plane had been struck by lightning.

As emergency crews sped to the scene, commuters on their way home from work on the multi-lane highway became snared in a massive traffic jam. At one point, another huge plume of smoke emerged from the wreckage, but it was unclear whether it was from an explosion.

A row of emergency vehicles lined up behind the wreck, and a fire truck sprayed the flames with water and foam. By 8 p.m., authorities were reporting that the fire had been extinguished.

Within minutes of the crash, with scant details about the injuries, the number of passengers and circumstances of the crash available, the spectacle was being broadcast live on television in Canada and the United States, much of it with the help of automated Ministry of Transportation cameras mounted to monitor the flow of highway traffic.

Perhaps the best indication of how serious the crash appeared to be at the time came from Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, who issued a statement saying she was "horrified" and "deeply saddened" to hear of the accident.

"My heart goes out to all of those involved, and my thoughts and prayers are with them and their families," Clarkson said.

Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre also expressed his best wishes to the passengers and their family members, and said he would appoint an official observer to maintain the channels of communication between the ministry and the Transportation Safety Board.

"Any safety deficiencies uncovered through this investigation would be addressed immediately," Lapierre said.

Flights scheduled to land at Pearson were diverted to other Canadian airports.

The most serious plane crash at Pearson, Canada's busiest airport, was more than 30 years ago. In 1970 an Air Canada DC-8 jet, en route from Montreal to Los Angeles, went down north of the airport, killing all 109 people aboard.

The last major jumbo jet crash in North America was on Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 lost part of its tail and plummeted into a New York City neighbourhood, killing 265 people. Safety investigators concluded the crash was caused by the pilot moving the rudder too aggressively.

Pearson had been operating under vigilant security measures in the wake of deadly bombings in London.

The federal Transportation Safety Board wasn't offering any clues Tuesday about the cause of the crash, but a team would be taking over the site and recovering the flight's cockpit voice recorder and data recorder to piece together what happened.

"It's like a series of crime scene investigations," said spokesman Conrad Bellehumeur.

The agency will also interview passengers, crew, witnesses and air traffic controllers, and review both the radar and voice versions of recordings of the air traffic control activity, Bellehumeur said.

"We're going to follow every lead and as soon as we see something of importance that might have contributed to the crash, we'll make that known publicly. Normally accidents of this kind are not caused by one single factor."

A brief chronology of the crash of Air France Flight 358:

7:15 a.m. EDT - Air France Flight 358 departs Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, bound for Pearson International Airport in Toronto.

3:58 p.m. - The plane nears a Pearson runway during a fierce thunderstorm, preparing to land. Some reports have the plane circling the airport once after an aborted attempt to land.

4:02 p.m. - With heavy rain showering the runway and visibility disappearing, the plane touches down. Passengers begin applauding the landing.

4:03 p.m. - Passengers report hearing a sound like a blown tire and the plane begins to shudder and slide, eventually overshooting the runway by about 200 metres and skidding into a creek bed.

4:05 p.m. - Passengers rapidly disembark the plane, some frantically sliding down emergency chutes. The plane erupts in flames. Smoke billows inside the fuselage.

4:10 p.m. - Emergency crews reach the area of the crash. Firefighters begin dousing the flames.

4:20 p.m. - Several survivors wander onto Highway 401, flagging down drivers as heavy traffic slows to a crawl. Ambulances arrive shortly afterward and begin treating victims, taking some to nearby hospitals.

4:25 p.m. - The airport is shut down. Inbound flights are rerouted to other airports in the country, including Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Ont., and Winnipeg.

Some facts about Air France and the Airbus A340 jet that crashed Tuesday at Pearson International Airport:

Airline: Paris-based Air France-KLM Group is world's largest airline in terms of revenue. Company is product of the French airline's acquisition last year of Dutch carrier KLM.

Financial: For year ended in March, airline earned $443 million US on revenues of $24.1 billion US.

Fleet: 375 planes; flies 1,800 daily flights

Passengers: Last fiscal year, it carried 43.7 million passengers to 84 countries. Largest European carrier in terms of passengers carried.

Plane: A340 is part of the A330/A340 family of six related aircraft, all sharing the same frame.

Manufacturer: Airbus, which is 80 per cent owned by European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. Britain's BAE Systems PLC owns the rest.

Model: Air France flys the A340-300.

Number of engines: 4

Range: 14,800 kilometres

Takeoff weight: 275,000 kilograms

Wing span: 60.3 metres

Maximum operating speed: 0.86 Mach

Source: Canadian Press

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