Flipped Plane, Failed Training, Fatigue: What Went Wrong With Delta’s Toronto Landing? – View from the Wing

We don’t yet know what caused the hard landing of the Delta flight that wound up upside down with its wings torn away in Toronto in heavy wind.

The Bombardier CRJ-900 (registration N932XJ) was operated by Endeavor Air, which is a wholly-owned regional subsidiary of Delta.

BREAKING- Toronto had a Delta flight flipped upside down. I got these photos from a friend on the plane. He’s okay. Minnesota to Toronto. pic.twitter.com/DeSoYAlsVo

— Kellie Meyer (@KellieMeyerNews) February 17, 2025

Delta CEO Ed Bastian defended the experience of the pilots at their regional carrier and says “there is one level of safety” at Delta. Is that accurate?

The captain of the Toronto Endeavor flight reportedly failed out of Delta first officer training and was sent back to the regional carrier where they remained in charge of an aircraft.

The CA on this flight FAILED training as a @Delta FO & CEO Graham returned him to Endeavor as a CA. His first officer got her ATP on 1/9/25 & schedules changed 12 times in a five day trip. #Fatigued Do you still challenge pilot error & leadership responsibility? https://t.co/AGoEb8k10N

— Karlene Petitt (@KarlenePetitt) February 19, 2025

Meanwhile, the reported identity of the first officer suggests she may have only recently become type-rated on the aircraft and it’s suggested that her schedule had changed 12 times on the five day trip, so probably fatigued.

✈️ The Delta/Endeavor plane that crashed was piloted by Kendal Swanson.

A year ago, she was an instructor pilot for a small propellor aircraft. Recently licensed to co-pilot a small jet.

Captain, who had a questionable record himself, may have erred trusting her to land the… pic.twitter.com/d6chYkPRg6

— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) February 19, 2025

Pilot flying Delta accident aircraft was brand new Endeavor Air hire Kendal Swanson. She was likely still on OE (training) ATP certified 1/9/2025
Pilot monitoring on the radios was a senior captain sim instructor who rarely flies #planecrash #toronto #delta #endeavor #DEI pic.twitter.com/5soBh0AVeD

— james gastovski (@jamesgastovski1) February 19, 2025

Now, regarding the claim that the co-pilot only received her Airline Transport Pilot certificate a month ago – that seems unlikely. More likely is that it was re-issued last month, and there can be a number of reasons for this. It appears she graduated from Endeavor’s academy last February.

While ALPA focuses on ‘1,500 hours of flying’ (time spent in a hot air balloon counts and the hot air balloon can be tethered) as a means to raise the cost of becoming a pilot and create artificial shortages to drive up wages, pilots develop bad habits that airlines to train out of them as they’ve tried to build up hours in non-commercial like settings such as repeated clear air touch-and-go’s.

Fatigue is a real issue for pilots, however. A five day domestic trip with constant scheduling flux, if accurate, seems like a very bad idea.

I am not going to say that I know the cause of this incident yet with any confidence. Were the pilots confused about their altitude? There were no calls to brace, this seemed to come as a surprise. Visibility was poor, there’s a lot of discussion of windshear, but could there have been incorrect altimeter readings? While one possibility is pilot error, we could learn that a contributing factor was a system failure of some kind. There are many things that could have happened here.