The pilot behind the dramatic Delta crash that flipped a plane upside down at Toronto Pearson Airport has been identified as 26-year-old First Officer Kendal Swanson. A Minnesota beauty pageant winner who completed her training just last April with under 1,500 flight hours.
(twitter.com)
🏛️ PANIC IN DEI 🏛️
The crosswind induced a roll at touchdown. What happened next was too fast to remediate. I'm just curious...do you have 1500 hours in a twin-jet commercial airliner with associated landings?
Crabbed landings are no fun. The Air Force had to use special landing gear on the B-52 to allow the plane to crab while keeping the gear aligned to the ground track.
I believe but it’s still weird that the first time I ever saw a crash on landing like this, it’s a beauty pageant winner. Don’t mean to judge but vs military and fighter pilots, I’ll “lean” for the military pilots vs a beauty pageant winner every time.
There's a first time for everything...though it is pretty clear that if the pilot was a white male, he would have gotten a pass. (Being a beauty pageant winner is less important than whether she was right- or left-handed. And that is less important than her instructor rating at the end of training.)
Do you want a fighter jet military pilot or a cargo/tanker military pilot? I would stay away from the fighter jocks. Especially Navy carrier pilots, for whom landings are already controlled crashes. Be careful what you wish for.
So far, the news indicates that the Captain (who was monitoring the flight) had served "in pilot-training and flight safety capacities," and the First Officer (who was flying the plane) "has the highest-level pilot certification in the U.S." https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/world-news/delta-faces-lawsuits-over-toronto-plane-crash-after-offering-passengers-30k/
Looked to me like the back wheels snapped off on touchdown
Yep. I think that was mentioned in some of the news coverage. They got a transverse load vector they weren't designed to handle. The thing about landing in a crosswind is that the plane has to angle into the wind in order to maintain a heading down the runway (crab angle), which means the landing gear are not facing the correct direction relative to the ground motion, and just at the moment of touchdown, straighten out so that the runout is along the runway centerline. But almost simultaneous with that, the roll caused the right wingtip to contact the ground, with associated force loadings on the landing gear (and a subsequent tumble).
nice explanation thanks
Try landing on pavement in a tail dragger in a crosswind! I got my tailwheel endorsement in 1991, and I consider it on par with getting the private license. It was like having to start over.
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