Delta’s offer to pay $30,000 to survivors of the horror flight to Toronto that crashed and flipped upside down on Monday has sparked an explosive debate and a sea of memes online.
The airline made the cash offer Wednesday to each of the 76 passengers who were on board as a gesture of goodwill with ‘no strings attached.’
Upon landing, the plane burst into flames and its wing snapped, prompting it to flip upside down, leaving passengers ‘hanging like bats’ from their seats.
Miraculously, everybody on board survived the accident, with 21 people taken to the hospital for treatment.
If all 76 passengers agree to the cash payment, Delta will be forking out $2.3million.
The offer comes with ‘no strings attached and does not impact rights,’ a Delta spokesman said, meaning passengers could still pursue legal action against the airline, like suing for damages in civil court.
The offer prompted a torrent of responses online, with some saying they would accept the cash in a heartbeat and others insisting it’s not enough.
‘$30,000 isn’t REMOTELY enough!!!!!!!’ one X user wrote.
‘NOPE. Delta almost literally killed all of them,’ another agreed.
‘That’s not enough for the trauma that these people are going through,’ a third person added, while yet another asked: ’30k for a near-death experience?’
Delta’s cash offer prompted a torrent of responses online, with some saying they would accept the cash in a heartbeat and others insisting it’s not enough
Upon landing, the plane burst into flames and its wing snapped , prompting it to flip upside down, leaving passengers ‘hanging like bats’ from their seats
Many users employed memes to accompany their opinion, with one sharing a clip of a man farting into phone handset below the statement: ‘My response if Delta called me and offered $30,000’.
Other used the debate to say that they would happily collect the cash payment.
‘Flip me anytime,’ one X user wrote.
’30 racks wow. I would be part of a flip just for the Instagram stories,’ another joked.
One commenter even photoshopped himself into a picture of the crash’s aftermath to joke that he was among the passengers eligible for the five-figure payment.
Still, many agreed that the passengers should get much more than what Delta is offering.
‘They all deserve a few million. 30k for a airplane crash is laughable,’ one user said.
’30k would barely cover what I had in my luggage so yeah. Y’all don’t settle for less than 200k and lifetime flights,’ another wrote.
‘They’ll get more in a class action lawsuit,’ a third said.
‘There will be some passengers who feel they are scarred for life and others who will think this was the coolest thing to ever happen to them,’ remarked one user.
Miraculously, everybody on board survived the accident , with 21 taken to the hospital for treatment. (Pictured: cranes lifting the Delta plane from the runway)
The $30,000 offer comes amid an investigation into what went so wrong, with a collaborative effort from Transportation Safety Board of Canada, the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian defended his pilots earlier on Wednesday, telling CBS there is only ‘one level of safety’ across the airline and its subsidiaries.
‘All these pilots train for these conditions. They fly under all kinds of conditions at all of the airports in which we operate. So, no, there’s nothing specific with respect to experience that I’d look to,’ Bastian said.
Shocking images from the scene showed the plane upside down on the ice-covered runway.
Audio recovered from the air traffic control tower between controllers and a Medevac helicopter has shed light on the incident.
About 2.13pm on Monday, one official could be heard saying: ‘This airplane has just crashed.’
During a separate conversation, first responders in the skies revealed what they could see from above.
‘Just so you’re aware, there’s people also walking around the aircraft there,’ one person says.
‘Yeah, we’ve got it,’ another man responds. ‘The aircraft is upside down and burning.’
If all 76 passengers on board agree to the cash payment, Delta will be forking out $2.3million
Terrified passengers opened up about the experience in the aftermath of the crash, revealing they were ‘hanging like bats’ after the plane flipped.
Pete Koukov recalled the harrowing experience of having to unstrap himself from his seat while upside down and hurry to the emergency exit.
‘We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down hanging like bats,’ he said.
‘Just feeling lucky and happy I got to give the person I didn’t know sitting next to me a big hug, that we were OK, and see my friends who are here to pick me up from the airport and give them a big hug.’
Passenger John Nelson told CNN the plane ‘went sideways and… we skidded on our side and flipped over on our back.’
He added: ‘When we hit, it was super hard.
‘I did notice the winds were super gusty. The snow had kinda blown over the runways. So coming it was routine but it was noticeable that the runways were in kind of a weird condition.’
The moment the plane stopped, Nelson noticed ‘there was a big fireball on the left side of the plane.’
Terrified passengers opened up about the experience in the aftermath of the crash
Aviation is under incredible scrutiny after several major crashes in the first few weeks of 2025 alone.
Some 67 people died in a collision between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet.
The causes are still under investigation, but early reports revealed staffing levels were ‘not normal,’ and that a single controller was handling helicopter traffic as well as airline traffic at the airport.
Days later a medical jet crashed in Philadelphia killing all six people on board.
Then, a small plane carrying 10 crashed over Alaska, again killing everybody on board.
