AN INVESTIGATION began last night into an aviation “great escape”, which saw all 300 passengers - including seven Britons - survive a plane crash at Toronto airport.

Everyone aboard the Air France plane got clear before flames and smoke engulfed the aircraft, which overshot the runway in bad weather at Pearson International Airport on Tuesday.

Forty-three people on the Airbus A340 crash suffered minor injuries. The Foreign Office said none of the Britons were hurt.

With the crew and passengers available for interview as well as other eye witnesses, aviation experts believe investigators will quickly establish the cause of the crash of the flight from Paris.

Chris Yates, an aviation safety analyst for Janes Transport, said: “Investigators will want to look at the weather conditions, the radar data, the pilot’s conversation with air traffic controllers and the runway conditions.

“They will also want to know if the pilot, perhaps low on fuel, had no option but to land and if the runway has been inspected.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada investigation will look at the possibility that the plane, with 297 passengers and 12 crew aboard, was struck by lightning. There is also speculation that a gust of wind might have increased the groundspeed on touchdown or increased its airspeed while coming in to land.

Gwen Dunlop, a passenger who was returning to Canada from a holiday in France, said: “It happened so quickly - it was a little bit like being in a movie. At some point, the wing was off. The oxygen masks never came down. The plane was filling up with smoke.”

She said a flight attendant tried to calm passengers and tell them that everything was fine. “And yet the plane was on fire and smoke was pouring in. I don’t like to criticise, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared.”

Ms Dunlop said some passengers went down emergency chutes, while others jumped out on their own.

The plane had skidded into a ravine in a wooded area off Highway 401, the busiest freeway in Canada. Some passengers scrambled up the ravine in the pouring rain, ducked beneath a bridge and climbed into an abandoned truck, worried the plane would explode.

Posted by Administrator in World News