Black Boxes Found In Toronto Crash

Airport Was Under 'Red Alert' Because Of Lightning Threat

(CBS/AP) 
"The lights went off, like, a minute before landing. And then the plane landed normally for maybe 10 seconds. And then after that, the disaster happened," passenger Oliver Dubos told CBS News' Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.

"We went off (the run)way. And we were really going very, very fast. And the plane started to shake everywhere. And we could see fire, flames outside."

Passengers were "completely panicking and stressed. We were actually trying to hold (onto) our seats," said Dubos. "And at that moment, we all thought that we would die, really. We thought we would just crash, blow up.

"And then finally, the plane stopped in the ravine. That's where we thought that maybe we had an opportunity to escape from the plane."

Spinetta said Air France bought the aircraft new on Sept. 7, 1999. It was last serviced July 15 and had logged 28,418 flight-hours and 3,711 takeoffs and landings.

Spinetta said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash, the first of an Airbus A340 in its 13 years of commercial service.

Two dozen Air France officials, including a medical team and a psychologist, flew to Toronto. A separate team of experts, including six from Airbus, three from the French accident investigation bureau and three from Air France, headed to Toronto earlier, Spinetta said.

The first sign of trouble came minutes before landing when the pilot aborted an initial attempt because of the storm and powerful winds. About a minute before the jetliner touched down, the lights in the cabin went out, passenger Olivier Dubois said.

Gwen Dunlop, who was returning from a vacation in France, said some passengers went down emergency chutes, while others jumped from the plane on their own. "We were all trying to go up a hill; it was all mud and we lost our shoes," she said.

Some of the 297 passengers and 12 crew members reached the nearby highway.

"It was chaotic," police Sgt. Craig Platt said. "Thankfully, the drivers on highway 401 stopped and offered their assistance."

David Learmount, an aviation safety expert with British-based Flight International magazine, said the crash appears similar to others in which planes have overshot runways before hitting obstacles or uneven ground, in this case a gully about 300 feet beyond the tarmac.

So-called overruns are "not all that rare," especially during heavy rainstorms when a plane's wheels can fail to grip the tarmac, Learmount said.