The Physics behind the Delta Flight 4819 flip over

It was a dramatic and unusual sight: a Delta Air Lines passenger jet crash-landed on Monday (this week) 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. An imbalance in aerodynamic forces caused Flight 4819 to turn over.

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. If the forces become unbalanced around any axis of the airplane, then the airplane will start rotating around that axis.

The above 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.

Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 left Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Monday morning.

Emergency responders were able to successfully extricate all 76 passengers and four crew members.

Aviation tracking data from Flightradar24 pointed to tricky conditions at Toronto Pearson International Airport at the time of the crash, noting that they "indicated a gusting crosswind and blowing snow."

Crosswinds are horizontal winds that blow perpendicular to the direction of an aircraft's flight path. They can sometimes complicate pilots' efforts to land a plane.  The intensity of the wind on that day could be implicated in the plane's rightward tilt upon landing.

A sudden gust of wind could cause the upward lift force on one wing to become much greater than that on the other wing and flip the airplane. One of the wings breaking and falling off would have a similar effect.

Hitting a snow or ice patch could tilt the plane and help flip it, although the runway was clear according to the news reports.

Source: news.northeastern.edu.