Plane Crashes In Toronto

A passenger jetliner carrying more than 200 people erupted in flames Tuesday after skidding off a runway while landing in a fierce thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Black smoke billowed into the air as the wreck burned.

Canadian and American authorities told CBS News that there were no fatalities in the crash.

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

A Toronto radio station said some passengers were seen climbing from the plane, and that most of the others had been safely evacuated.

Police said the plane was an Air France A340 from Paris that was trying to land when it ran into trouble. There was a storm — with lightning and strong wind gusts — in the area at the time.

A radio station reported live from the scene that there were two explosions on the plane. The station quoted a police official on the nearby freeway as saying two groups of passengers had been evacuated from the jet.

The station also said some passengers could be seen climbing from the plane and that emergency workers said most of 252 people on board were safe.

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. 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, Canada's busiest highway, 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 1:32pm local time and was supposed to land at 4:12pm in Toronto.

"They made an approach in weather that was worse than what they anticipated," John Wiley, a retired Airbus pilot in Toronto, told CNN.

Thunderstorms create the possibility of wind shear, the sudden, dangerous air currents that can dash an airplane to the ground as it takes off or lands.

The last major jumbo 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 $443 million on revenues of $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.