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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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 Tue Aug 02, 2005 5:15 pm Jet Bursts Into Flames on Landing in Toronto |
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| Quote: |
Jet Bursts Into Flames on Landing in Toronto
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
TORONTO � An Air France passenger jet caught fire after reportedly skidding off a runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport (search) as it came in for a landing on Tuesday afternoon.
The plane was landing during a heavy storm and Canadian media reports said it may have been struck by lightning.
Early reports indicated that at least 200 people and as many as 291 were on board the plane.
A Toronto radio station said some passengers were seen climbing from the plane, and that most of the others had been safely evacuated. The pilot and copilot also reportedly were safe and were being questioned by authorities.
Police said the plane was an Air France A340 from Paris that was trying to land at Canada's busiest airport when it ran into trouble. There was a storm � with lightning and strong wind gusts � in the area at the time.
Police spokeswoman Diane Cossitt said she heard over police scanners that the passengers and crew were evacuated. "That is my understanding from what I've heard but I've got no confirmation one way or the other," she said.
Black smoke billowed from the wreckage as the aircraft burned. A row of emergency vehicles lined up behind the wreckage, and a fire truck sprayed the flames with water.
The flaming ruin was next to the four-lane Highway 401, Canada's busiest highway, and some cars and trucks stopped on the roadway after the crash.
Leah Walker, a radio reporter in Toronto, said she saw a third of the plane fall and that the rest became a fireball. "This plane attempted to land in some very fierce weather we had today," she said.
According to Reuters, a ticket agent in Montreal with Air France said the plane was its AF358 flight from Paris to Toronto. "That's all we know," the agent said.
Paris-based Air France-KLM Group is the world's largest airline in terms of revenue. It is the product of the French flagship airline's acquisition last year of Dutch carrier KLM. For the year ended in March, the company earned $443 million on revenues of $24.1 billion.
The last major jumbo jet crash in North America was on Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 (search) lost part of its tail and plummeted into a New York City neighborhood, killing 265 people. Safety investigators concluded that the crash was caused by the pilot moving the rudder too aggressively.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stay with the FOX News Channel and FOXNews.com for more on this developing story.
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Am so glad I don't have to fly anytime soon. Hope everyone was ok  .
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Paris10
Commander
Joined: 26 Aug 2001
Posts: 458
Location: estados unidos
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| Tue Aug 02, 2005 7:15 pm |
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| Quote: | By ROB GILLIES and BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writers
TORONTO - A jetliner carrying 309 people skidded off a runway while landing in a thunderstorm Tuesday, sliding into a ravine and breaking into pieces, but remarkably everyone aboard survived by jumping to safety in the moments before the plane burst into flames.
Fourteen people suffered minor injuries in the 4:03 p.m. crash landing of Air France Flight 358 from Paris � the first time an Airbus A340 had crashed in its 13 years of commercial service.
The plane, carrying 297 passengers and 12 crew, overshot the runway by 200 yards at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, said Steve Shaw, a vice president of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority.
The aircraft skidded down a slope into a wooded area next to one of Canada's busiest highways, and some survivors said that passengers 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.
"It was really, really scary. Everyone was panicking," Dubois told CTV. "People were screaming and ... jumping as fast as possible and running everywhere, because our biggest fear is that it would blow up."
Roel Bramar, who was also in the back of the plane, said he used an escape chute to get out of the plane.
"We had a hell of a roller coaster coming down the ravine," Bramer told CNN.
They said the power went off shortly before landing, perhaps after the plane was hit by lighting. But Dubois said he did not expect a crash landing and that there was no warning from the captain.
"It was very very fast," Dubois 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.
Corey Marks told CNN he was at the side of the road when he watched the plane touch down and crash.
"It was around 4 o'clock, it was getting really dark, and all of a sudden lightning was happening, a lot of rain was coming down," Marks said. "This plane ... came in on the runway, hits the runway nice. Everything looked good, sounds good and all of a sudden we heard the engines backing up. ... He went straight into the valley and cracked in half."
A row of emergency vehicles lined up behind the wreck, and a fire truck sprayed the flames with water. A government transportation highway camera recorded the burning plane, and the footage was broadcast live on television in Canada and the United States.
A portion of the plane's wing could be seen jutting from the trees as smoke and flames poured from the middle of its broken fuselage. At one point, another huge plume of smoke emerged from the wreckage, but it wasn't clear whether it was from an explosion.
Airbus spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said the A340 has never crashed before in its 13 years of commercial service.
Chris Yates, an aviation specialist with Jane's Transport magazine, said the A340 is a very popular "workhorse" among carriers serving Asian and trans-Atlantic routes, with a very good safety record.
Although it was too early to draw any conclusions about the accident, Yates said, "we're probably talking about a weather-related issue here."
Although modern airliners are safer than ever, he said, extreme conditions can still be dangerous, especially during takeoff and landing.
"You can never account for weather," Yates said. "A thunderstorm can happen anywhere � it comes down to the judgment of the air traffic controller and the skill of the pilot to determine whether it's appropriate to land or to divert elsewhere."
Tuesday's airplane crash in Toronto came exactly 20 years after an American disaster that focused renewed attention to wind shear, a natural phenomenon that can make airplanes drop out of the sky.
While the cause of the Toronto crash has not yet been determined, the fact that it happened during a thunderstorm raises the possibility of wind shear.
The 1985 airline crash at Dallas-Forth Worth airport, which killed more than 137 people, made dealing with wind shear "a national imperative" for the U.S. federal government, said Larry Cornman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Since then, he said Tuesday, systems to detect wind shear have been installed at almost all major airports in the United States. Cornman said the Canadian government investigated installing such systems during the 1990s, but added he did not know how many have been installed.
Wind shear is a sudden change in wind speed or direction. The most dangerous kind, called a microburst, is caused by air descending from a thunderstorm.
The last major 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 neighborhood, killing 265 people. Safety investigators concluded that the crash was caused by the pilot moving the rudder too aggressively.
Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport handles over 28 million passengers a year. Located 17 miles west of Toronto in the town of Mississauga, it has three terminals. Air France operates out of Terminal 3.
Paris-based Air France-KLM Group is the world's largest airline in terms of revenue. It is the product of the French flagship airline's acquisition last year of Dutch carrier KLM. For the year ended in March, the company earned $443 million on revenues of $24.1 billion.
Air France-KLM operates a fleet of 375 planes and flies 1,800 daily flights, according to the company's Web site. In the last fiscal year, it carried 43.7 million passengers to 84 countries around the globe. That made it the largest European carrier in terms of the number of passengers carried.
The A340 is part of the A330/A340 family of six related aircraft, all sharing the same frame, manufactured by Airbus, which is 80 percent owned by European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. Britain's BAE Systems PLC owns the rest.
The craft owned and flown by Air France is the A340-300. The plane, usually is equipped to carry 295 passengers, and fly 7,400 miles before refueling.
There are currently 237 of the A340-300 and its sister craft, the A340-200, in operation, according to the manufacturer.
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I am sooo glad that everyone is safe.
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:10 pm |
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That is soooooo cool that no one died. Watching this on CNN... total miracle.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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madlilnerd
Duchess of Dancemat
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 5885
Location: Slough, England
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| Wed Aug 03, 2005 12:05 pm |
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No one died because flying is surprisingly safe. They do a lot of safety training to make sure they can get everyone out if something does go wrong. Plus, I got told that the fire started after most people had already been evacuated. Apparently, they weren't even any major injuries. 
The wreckage looked kickass, though.
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Dirt
Exercise Boy
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 2086
Location: a tree
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| Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:08 am |
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Only reason no one died was because they were flying Airbus and not Boeing  
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:53 am |
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Tsss, tell that to the Air France flight that went down over there last year. You knooooow it's because it happened in Canada.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Dirt
Exercise Boy
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 2086
Location: a tree
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| Fri Aug 05, 2005 8:58 am |
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Nope, that was because it was air FRANCE That's just asking for trouble
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PrankishSmart
Rear Admiral
Joined: 29 Apr 2002
Posts: 4779
Location: Hobart, Australia.
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| Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:32 am |
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| Dirt wrote: | | Only reason no one died was because they were flying Airbus and not Boeing |
Boeing are engineered better and have been around far longer than airbus... 79 years longer. They have far more experience in aviation engineering and design. The only reason why boeing holds more crashes to it's list than airbus is because they have far more aircraft in service and have been a company since 1906! Airbus started in the mid 80's. I believe the boeing 777 is the jet with one of the best saftey record's.
Airbus aircraft are too underpowered for their sizes.
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Dirt
Exercise Boy
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 2086
Location: a tree
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| Sat Aug 06, 2005 4:40 pm |
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And you think the people that airbus hired have no experience in building aircraft don't know their stuff? Sheesh, what a load of crap. Anyway, it was all a joke, Boeing, Airbus, it don't make no difference to me
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