VIDEO: Delta 4819 crash: all signs point to DEI pilot error

Yesterday, Canada's Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report into the crash (call it "collision with terrain" if you like) of Delta Airlines flight 4819 on landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport (YYZ). If you missed our initial post on this story, click here to read it and see the video.

The TSB report, boiled down to one sentence, says that the Bombardier CRJ900, experienced a hard "pancake" landing. A warning system on the flight sent an alert indicating a high rate of descent less than three seconds before the plane touched down. Less than a second before touchdown, the plane's rate of descent was 1110 feet per minute.

The flight manual defines a hard landing as a "landing at a vertical descent rate greater than 600 ft/min when the aircraft's gross weight is less than or equal to [maximum landing weight]." Flight 4819 (operated by Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air) weighed less than its maximum allowable take-off weight at the time of the crash. 

The report also says that less than a second before landing, the angle of the plane's aircraft, known as the pitch attitude, was 1 degree. The flight operations manual states pitch attitude at touchdown should be between 3 and 8 degrees.

In today's video, Dan Millican -- the same experienced pilot who appears in the earlier video -- analyses the TSB report and draws some inescapable conclusions as to the role played by DEI First Officer who was flying the plane. We've added a summary of the report below the video window.

   

In a news release yesterday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said, "It is too early to draw conclusions as to the causes of this accident. A full investigation report, which will include the TSB's analysis into why the accident happened and the Board's findings, will be released in due course.

Delta 4819 took off from Minneapolis (MSP) with 76 passengers, two flight crew members and two cabin crew members. The names of the pilots have been scrubbed from the Internet. in the wake of Delta's denial that they were DEI hires. 

All we know is that the Captain was male, hired by Mesaba Airlines (forerunner of Endeavor Air) in 2007, and that the First Officer was female, hired by Endeavor in 2024. Delta says stories that she had failed training events are false. 

According to the TSB, the FO was in control of the plane when it crashed. At 1400 EST, winds were gusting to 35 knots in the area. After the flight crew received clearance to land at Runway 23 at YYZ, they flew the approach at 149 knots, "given the reported wind gusts."

 Around 2.6 seconds before touchdown, a "sink rate" alert sounded, "indicating a high rate of descent," the report said. The alert came from the plane's enhanced ground proximity warning system. At the time the alert sounded, the plane's airspeed was 136 knots. Less than a second before touchdown, the aircraft's indicated airspeed was 134 knots and its ground speed was 111 knots. 

Around 1412, the right main landing gear touched the runway. The report continues: "At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right [main landing gear] fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire. The exact sequence of these events is still to be determined by further examination of the fracture surfaces." 

The plane then began to slide along the runway, eventually going off the right side into a snow-covered grass area, coming to rest on Runway 15L, near the intersection with Runway 23. Meanwhile, the right wing became fully detached from the plane and slid around 215 feet further along Runway 23. Once the aircraft came to a stop, an evacuation began. There were 21 people injured among the 80 on board, with two people reported to have serious injuries.

John Gradek, an operations and integrated aviation management professor at McGill University, told the media the plane had "a hard, flat landing", sometimes called a "pancake landing". He said the plane's descent rate was "significantly higher than you would expect to have in a given landing area.... It was, by all classifications, a hard landing. The nose only being up 1 degree is also not typical, he added, and can result in a flat landing that puts stress on the aircraft, he said.

Getting back to the DEI question, here's a photo from the Endeavor Air website.

On the same page, one can read Endeavor Air's Mission Statement, followed by:

"OUR MOST IMPORTANT BEHAVIORS [which include]

Promote diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the airline and our operation."

That's all ye know and all ye need to know.