36 passengers on a domestic flight from Arizona to Hawaii were injured when severe turbulence struck the plane shortly before landing. Among the injured, 11 were seriously injured.
The Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330-200, carrying 278 passengers and 10 crew members, was 30 minutes from Honolulu when it was caught in severe turbulence due to stormy conditions. “My mother flew and hit the ceiling,” he testified to Hawaii news now a passenger explaining that her mother had just returned to her seat when the first tremors hit, leaving no time to fasten her seatbelt.
The company had not experienced “incidents of this nature in recent history,” Jon Snook, the company’s director of operations, said during a press conference, quoted by The Guardian.
An open internal investigation
Immediately after the turbulence, the aircraft began its descent, obtaining emergency clearance to land. The passengers suffered cuts, including to the head, as well as blows and bruises. Among the 36 injured people, 20 were treated by hospital services. The seriously injured were conscious on admission.
“We are delighted and fortunate that there have been no deaths or other serious injuries. And we also hope that everyone makes a full recovery,” said Jim Ireland, Honolulu Medical’s director of services.
An investigation has been opened to determine how such a situation could have occurred. Weather services had issued a thunderstorm warning in the flight path of the Hawaiian Airlines. The area where the turbulence occurred “was not dangerous in any way,” considered the company’s head of operations, to dismiss any criticism of the plane’s flight path.
The investigation will also have to determine whether the flight crew took all the precautions to avoid these accidents, that is, measures in addition to the light signal that asked passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.
Source: BFM TV
