Delta Flight Passenger Reveals Moment He Stood on Ceiling of Upturned Plane to Help Others From Seats Who 'Were Hanging Like Bats'

A passenger who was on the Delta Air Lines flight that flipped over when landing in Toronto described the aftermath of the crash, saying people were "upside down hanging like bats."

Concretely, Peter Koukov told CNN that he "didn't know anything was the matter" until the plane crashed. After that the goal was to "get out of there as quickly as possible," he added. Some passengers were able to unbuckle themselves, while others had to be assisted by flight attendants.

Another passenger, Peter Carlson, said people were yelling about the need to get out of the plane and the "absolute initial feeling is just need to get out of this." "What I saw was everyone on that plane suddenly became very close, in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another," he told Canada's CBC.

The plane, Delta Flight 4819, had departed from Minneapolis at 11:47 a.m., local time. It was operated by Endeavor Air, Delta's regional subsidiary. Fire engines were able to quickly put out a fire that ignited after the crash. 18 people were injured in the crash, with three in critical but non-life-threatening condition.

Despite the incident, an aviation expert said two factors were key in preventing it from becoming a tragedy: advancements in aircraft design and seat safety avoided a "much worse" outcome for the 80 people who were in the plane, David Soucie, a safety analyst and former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety inspector, told CNN.

"Everything that could go wrong went wrong, yet 80 people survived the accident," Soucie said. The expert compared the crash at Toronto Pearson with one in Denver that took place in 1987, when 28 people died after a DC-9 aircraft flipped over in similar circumstances.

Soucie explained that back then the wing didn't break, something that ended up being harmful. "You don't want that wing ripping the fuselage in half," he said, adding that it's better for it to break loose "as it's supposed to let that aircraft slowly come to a stop and that really saved a lot of lives."