Air France Airbus skids off runway in Toronto

** Update: Reports from CBC and CNN indicate that there have been zero injuries. That's amazing, considering.

The thing I found most facinating about this whole thing is that Americans really don't know how to pronounce the word *Toronto*. Here's a little lesson, it's pronounced *Tron-toe*, not *Tor-on-tooooooooe*.

There are no reports of injuries yet, but looking at the footage by local stations, this could be pretty miserable.

TORONTO - A passenger jetliner carrying about 200 people erupted in flames Tuesday after skidding off a runway while landing in a fierce thunderstorm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Black smoke billowed into the air as the wreck burned.

Police said the plane was an Air France A340 from Paris that was trying to land when it ran into trouble. There was a storm — with lightning and strong wind gusts — in the area at the time.

Leah Walker, a radio reporter in Toronto, said she saw a third of the plane fall and that the rest became a fireball. "This plane attempted to land in some very fierce weather we had today," she said.

Thunderstorms create the possibility of wind shear, the sudden, dangerous air currents that can dash an airplane to the ground as it takes off or lands.

Yahoo news

Pics courtesy of Neale News