NICOLAAS VAN RIJNWITH STAR STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Shocked passengers and crew flagged down startled motorists on Highway 401 after an Air France jet carrying 297 passengers and 12 crew crashed and skidded into a ravine at Toronto's Pearson International Airport while attempting to land during a thunderstorm this afternoon.
Everyone survived; only a few passengers reported minor injuries.
As passengers scrambled across a fence and up an embankment to traffic rushing by on the nearby 401, Canada's busiest highway, explosions and bright flames ripped through the crumpled fuselage.
Passenger Roel Bramar, who recalled "running like crazy" after the crash, said the final approach seemed fast to him.
"I thought we were coming in a little too fast," he told CBC-TV. "The landing appeared to be okay until, it seemed, the captain wasn't able to apply sufficient braking power.
"Then, all of a sudden, everything went up in the air," he recalled. While passengers remained belted into their seats, "there was a real roller coaster going on. We had a hell of a roller coaster going down the ravine."
After the plane came "to an abrupt stop - and that's putting it mildly," Bramar said - cabin attendants opened the doors and passengers scrambled to emergency chutes as smoke began to billow up behind them.
Witnesses said the plane appeared to be making a normal descent until the very last moments, when it careened off Runway 24-Left and skidded into a ravine, where it burst into flames as passengers and crew raced to get off the plane using emergency chutes.
Air France confirmed there were no fatalities; emergency workers at the scene estimated about 14 injuries. Many of the injuries were minor enough to be treated on scene, officials said; most passengers were able to continue their journeys after making it to safety.
Passengers interviewed after the crash said cabin attendants quickly opened exit doors and deployed emergency chutes after the aircraft juddered to a halt in the ravine, just metres from Highway 401, which was already packed with homeward-bound commuters.
The airport was on Red Alert at the time, indicating special measures were being taken because of severe weather issues, including lightning and wind shear. Some eyewitnesses said they saw lightning strike the plane, and some passengers said after the crash that the cabin lights briefly went out just seconds before the crash.
Another witness said he heard the jet's engines power up as the pilot engaged the craft's thrust deflectors to bring his airplane to a stop.
Among the survivors seeking help was the co-pilot of the stricken craft.
"We located the co-pilot on Highway 401," said Peel police sergeant Glyn Griffiths.
"A pilot has gone to hospital, and they were picked up on the 401 and a number of other passengers were wandering around the area," Griffiths said.
Toronto ambulance spokesperson Larry Roberts said the passengers just made it off before the aircraft burst into flames about 200 metres to the west of Runway 24L, abutting the busy Highway 401.
"It looks like the passengers got off the plane before it got fully engulfed in flames," Roberts said.
The Airbus A340, which can be configured to carry up to 350 people, crashed at 4:03 p.m., Pearson airport officials said, confirming the passengers were able to exit the plane before it burst into flames.
Survivors emerging from the wreckage said the jet, Air France Flight 358 from Paris to Toronto, was full.
Roberts said Toronto's emergency services were quickly able to assemble several buses to transport ambulatory patients - the "walking wounded," he called them - to area hospitals.
At 5 p.m. half a dozen people milled about in the area near the crash, waiting for ambulances.
Roberts said injuries in such an accident could range from burns to broken bones, bruises and sprained ankles from sliding down the emergency chutes.
Eyewitness David Dennis, 13, at the airport's Sheraton hotel awaiting his mother's arrival on a flight from Chicago, stared out the window and saw "a massive wall of smoke" rising from the crash site a little over a kilometre away.
"The smoke wasn't that high, but it was very wide," said Dennis.
The crash led to an immediate but brief shutdown of Pearson.
Dennis' father David, in an arrival lounge at Terminal 3, said a Toronto airport official told people awaiting passengers that no further planes were arriving or leaving.
Nevertheless, he said, "the screens are still posting flight and arrival times, as if nothing had happened."
Hours after the crash, airport crash tenders continued to pour foam on the burning wreckage, resting in a green field at the southwest end of the airport as the airliner's blue, red and white Air France tail jutted proudly from the billowing smoke.
