No Deaths In Toronto Plane Crash

A jetliner carrying more than 300 erupted in flames Tuesday after skidding off a runway while landing in a thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. A government official said it appeared everyone survived but 14 people suffered 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 200 yards and that he believed the fire broke out after the passengers were evacuated.

Air France also announced in Paris that there were 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 4 p.m. when it ran into trouble. There was a storm — with lightning and strong wind gusts — in the area at the time.

CBS News Correspondent Barry Bagnato reports that a witness told a Canadian television it appears the plane was hit by lightning.

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 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.

Another passenger, Roel Bramar, told Canadian Broadcasting Corp.: "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.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr reports that the successful evacuation was a testament to the airplane and the crew's training. The airbus A340, like all other planes, was certified only after it could be proven that all passengers could be safely evacuated even if only half the emergency doors were available.

Orr reports that evacuation has to happen in no more than 90 seconds.

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.

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 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."

CBS Radio reports that Air France Flight 358 left Paris at 1:32 p.m. local time and was supposed to land at 4:12 p.m. in Toronto.

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.

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.

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 US$443 million on revenues of US$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.