Severe turbulence injures 25 on Delta flight, forcing emergency landing
The Airbus A330-900, Flight DL56, landed around 7:45 p.m. on Wednesday, and airport fire department staff and paramedics were on standby, according to The Associated Press.
The airline later reported that 25 passengers were taken to various hospitals for evaluation and treatment.
One passenger said the people who were injured were not wearing their seatbelts.
'They hit the ceiling, and then they fell to the ground and the carts also hit the ceiling and fell to the ground and people were injured. It happened several times, so it was really scary,' Leann Clement-Nash told ABC News.
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Another passenger, William Webster, told CNN he takes approximately 80 flights a year, and called it 'the craziest turbulence I've ever seen in my life.'
'I felt the centrifugal force. I was off my seat for like 30 seconds with the turbulence,' he said.
Delta applauded the response of emergency services.
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'We are grateful for the support of all emergency responders involved,' it said in a statement.
Passengers are rarely seriously injured as a result of turbulence, but scientists say climate change could be creating more precarious flying conditions.
To mitigate the risk of injury, experts have stressed the importance of wearing a seatbelt whenever possible.
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Turbulence is unstable air that moves erratically. It is heaviest when two large air masses close together move at different speeds, which occurs most commonly in jet streams — narrow, snaking currents of wind blowing at high altitudes.
'When you get strong wind shear near the jet stream, it can cause the air to overturn. And that creates these chaotic motions in the air,' Thomas Guinn, chair of the applied aviation sciences department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., told the AP.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, between 2009 and 2022, 163 people were seriously injured enough from turbulence to require hospital treatment for at least two days.
Most of them were flight attendants, who are more at risk of injury because they move around the cabin during flights.
In May 2024, a passenger on a Singapore Airlines flight that hit severe turbulence was killed, marking the first turbulence-related death in decades.
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Photo from inside Singapore Airlines flight SQ321, which experienced heavy turbulence, resulting in one passenger's death. Global News
The Boeing 777-300 dropped 6,000 feet in about three minutes after hitting a patch of heavy turbulence over the Indian Ocean.
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In addition to the death, six or seven other passengers were severely injured, while dozens of travellers and crew members reportedly suffered less serious injuries.
The NTSB is investigating what happened aboard DL56, and will provide a preliminary report in several weeks' time.
— With files from The Associated Press
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