300 escape blazing Air France plane

2005-08-03 00:15

Toronto - A jetliner carrying more than 300 erupted in flames on Tuesday after skidding off a runway while landing in a thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

A government official said it appeared everyone had survived, but 14 people had minor injuries.

Steve Shaw, a vice-president of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, said there were 297 passengers and 12 crew aboard the plane.

He said the jet overshot the runway by 200m and that he believed the fire broke out after the passengers were evacuated.

Air France also announced in Paris that there had been no fatalities in the crash.

Officials said the plane was an Air France A340 from Paris that was trying to land at Canada's busiest airport just after 16:00 (20:00 GMT) when it ran into trouble.

There was a storm - with lightning and strong wind gusts - in the area at the time.

'Really, really scary'

A man who identified himself as a survivor, Olivier Dubos, told CTV the lights in the plane went out a minute before the landing.

"It was scary, really, really scary."

He said some passengers scrambled on to 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 centre.

Another passenger, Roel Bramar, told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: "I saw lightning, maybe the plane had already been hit by lightning that's because just as we landed the lights went off.

"I got the idea the pilot wanted to lower the plane as soon as possible because there was such a rough storm," he said.

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.

Flaming ruin

At one point, another huge plume of smoke emerged from the wreckage, but it wasn't clear whether it was from an explosion.

The flaming ruin was next to the four-lane Highway 401, and some cars and trucks stopped on the roadway after the crash.

Corey Marks told CNN he was at the side of the highway when he watched the Air France plane touch down and crash.

"It was about 4 o'clock, it was getting really dark, and all of a sudden lightning was happening, a lot of rain was coming down," said Marks.

"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."

Toronto's Lester B Pearson International Airport handles more than 28 million passengers a year.

Located 27km west of Toronto in the town of Mississauga, it has three terminals. Air France operates out of Terminal 3.

Air France-KLM operates a fleet of 375 planes and flies 1 800 daily flights, according to the company's website.

In the last fiscal year, it carried 43.7 million passengers to 84 countries around the globe.

- AP