An Air Canada Boeing 737 MAX 8 arrived in Montreal on Thursday, then veered off a taxiway and came to rest in a grassy area at Trudeau airport. Air Canada said none of the 156 passengers and six crew members aboard Flight AC774 were injured.
The moment drew attention because Barbara Edelston Peterson posted a video after the incident showing what she described as a chaotic landing. She said the aircraft appeared to skid after touchdown before stopping in the grass, and that passengers could see dirt and debris outside the windows.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is now investigating the flight, and the early questions are straightforward: how a jet that had already landed ended up off the taxiway, and why it took so long for people to get off. John Gradek said the reported three-hour wait before deplaning was one of the most concerning parts of the incident. “To have passengers sit on the airplane for three hours is not what I would call prompt evacuation,” he said.
That delay stands out because the airplane was stuck and there was nowhere for it to go. In practical terms, that means the crew and airport responders could not simply taxi the jet away from the grassy area once it stopped. Gradek said commercial aircraft are certified to allow a full evacuation in 90 seconds, which is why he described the wait as “dangerously slow.”
The tension in this case is not injury, since none was reported, but process. A plane can be safe to the extent that everyone survives the landing and still leave behind a troubling question about how the response unfolded. The Transportation Safety Board investigators are expected to interview the flight crew, review communications with air traffic controllers, download cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder information, and physically inspect the aircraft.
Gradek said those recordings and flight data should give investigators a detailed picture of what was happening in the cockpit and how the aircraft was operating before and after the incident. The next answer that matters is whether the wait on the ground was a necessary caution or a breakdown in how quickly passengers should have been moved out of the aircraft.
