‘Imagine the Terror’: CNN Reporter Explains How Delta Flight Landed Upside Down ‘Completely Dark And On Fire’

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean praised everyone involved in getting 80 passengers who were aboard a Delta plane that crash-landed in Toronto off the aircraft on Monday afternoon.

Muntean also praised the passengers themselves while commenting it was difficult to comprehend the fear many of them must have felt after the aircraft landed upside down and caught fire.

What exactly went wrong with the flight – which took off from Minneapolis – remained unclear in the hours immediately after the incident.

“Delta Air Lines Flight 4819, operated by Endeavor Air, crashed while landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Canada around 2:45 p.m. local time on Monday, February 17. All 80 people on board were evacuated,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement shortly after the crash-landing.

The FAA added, “The CRJ-900 departed Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will be in charge of the investigation and will provide any updates.”

During CNN’s coverage of the harrowing incident, Muntean walked his network’s viewers through what they were seeing from photos of the upside-down aircraft:

That is the bottom of the fuselage. Now, on the top, you can also see the foam truck here and the firefighters responding from the airport firehouse putting out the fire, which looked to be primarily on the bottom of the fuselage of the airplane. That is where the fuel is that is so critical to get that fire out quickly as you’re trying to evacuate people. So a lot happening here all at once.

Let me recue this so you can see some of what was going on the very front of the airplane. You’re probably familiar with this door here as we pan over. This is the R-1 exit. In aviation terms, this is what you would board on coming in and out of a jetway. The door is fully open. The slide is not deployed. Don’t need it because you’re upside down. And you can see the folks here are coming out of the airplane, which would have been completely dark and on fire. You have to imagine the terror as folks tried to get out of this very quickly.

Muntean concluded, “Everybody across the board, pilots, flight attendants, the control tower, the crash fire, rescue crews, even the passengers did a good job.”

Watch above via CNN.