Physicist explains what may have caused Delta Flight 4819 to flip over - Northeastern University College of Science

It was a dramatic and unusual sight: a Delta Air Lines passenger jet crash-landed on Monday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, skidding into flames on the runway before flipping upside down.

Investigators are working to identify what went wrong, but the physics involved is clear-cut, a Northeastern University expert says.

That is, an imbalance in aerodynamic forces caused Flight 4819 to turn over, says Arun Bansil, university distinguished professor of physics at Northeastern.

“The underlying physics is quite simple. Various forces acting on the airplane must remain in proper balance for the airplane to fly, and to land and take off smoothly,” Bansil says. “If the forces become unbalanced around any axis of the airplane, then the airplane will start rotating around that axis.”

Video of the fiery landing shows the aircraft landing and immediately tilting to its right before flipping over, coming to a stop amid a dense cloud of smoke. Its right wing and tail had been sheared off during the crash.

Read more from Northeastern Global News.

Photo courtesy of Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP

Physics