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Officials at Montreal’s Trudeau airport are warning of operational delays Thursday evening after an incident involving an Air Canada aircraft resulted in a temporary runway closure.
In an email statement to CBC, Air Canada officials said Flight AC774 arriving from Los Angeles around 4 p.m. exited the taxiway after landing.
“No injuries are reported,” the statement reads.
The Boeing 737 Max aircraft, carrying 156 passengers and six crew members, landed normally but “sustained a runway excursion and travelled through the grass when exiting the main runway.”
By 7:45 p.m., Air Canada confirmed all passengers and crew had disembarked the plane and been transported to the terminal via buses.
Passenger details terrifying ordeal
Barbara Edelston Peterson, a passenger on the flight, told CBC’s Ian Hanomansing in a live interview from the airport that she was still shaken by the experience.
Edelston Peterson said it was pouring rain at the time, and she felt something was wrong the moment the plane hit the runway.
“We were going very fast and suddenly there was a big smoke smell and the next thing I knew, we were tumbling on the grass,” she said.
“There was smoke, dirt and grass right at my window so I couldn’t see outside.”
The moments that followed were terrifying, she said. “We didn’t know if [it] was going to blow up.”
Edelston Peterson said she and the other passengers were stuck in the plane for about three hours before they were able to disembark.
She described the crew as a “class act” for how they handled the aftermath.
Air Canada said it would be towing the plane to a hangar for a “full inspection.”
The carrier said it is launching a detailed investigation into the incident and will work with relevant authorities to determine the cause.
Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport is warning of operational delays after an Air Canada flight from Los Angeles veered off the taxiway after landing. No one was injured.
Check flight schedules
A spokesperson for Montreal’s Trudeau airport said the temporary closure of the runway — one of the airport’s two — is causing delays of around 30 minutes for domestic and international flights. Flights to the United States are seeing longer delays of around 45 minutes to an hour, but there were no flight cancellations as a result of the incident.
The runway reopened just before 10 p.m., but passengers should check their flight schedules before travelling to the airport.
Nav Canada, the non-profit that runs the country’s civil air navigation system, told CBC it implemented traffic management measures at the airport, including a temporary ground stop and subsequent flow restrictions.
The measures were put in place “to safely manage arrivals and departures.”
Nav Canada said the weather in the region is “also contributing to operational complexity and delays.”
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada confirmed it has opened an investigation.
“We are deploying investigators to the scene to gather information and assess the accident,” a spokesperson said in an email to CBC.
