Two crew members and 22 passengers were injured after a JetBlue flight experienced rough turbulence due to inclement weather. The flight that was traveling from Boston to Sacramento had to take a detour on to Rapid City.
Passengers from the 429 JetBlue Flight, had to be diverted to South Dakota’s Rapid City after high turbulence struck the aircraft. The flight arrived around 6:30 p.m (8:30 p.m ET), to the diverted location. Several passengers experienced neck injuries when on the flight and were taken care of as soon as they arrived at Rapid’s City’s airport. The 429 flight called in the airport and prepared ambulances and health experts to check on the passengers.
A scary flight
Reports and passengers are calling the incident a “bad dream” after some people had serious injuries and had to be taken to the Rapid City hospital by ambulance, including two crew members.
A JetBlue spokesman, Doug McGraw, informed about the incident assuring that injured passengers were immediately taken care of; Another 15 customers took a bus for a further health evaluation.
Social media has seen active information about JetBlue’s flight 429, showing pictures of injured passengers and the damage that resulted in the aircraft, which includes a broken bathroom and refrigerators doors spilling.
“People were flying out of their seat belts and hitting their head on the ceiling; it was very scary,” said Rhonda Renee a passenger from the JetBlue flight, to CNN News.
Renee described how the woman that was sitting in front of her had no seatbelt on and flew at least two feet in the air. Rhonda Renee had to ” literally grab her out of the air” and push her to her seat.
According to initial reports, a frontal boundary was the cause of the adverse weather conditions were the plane was traveling. The high turbulence caused oxygen masks to come down on to the passenger’s seats.
Casey Corcoran, another passenger from flight 429, describes the incident as hitting a wall and falling as people cried and screamed, which caused pilots to make an emergency landing in South Dakota.
A flight attendant was in the plane’s gallery when the turbulence struck the plane and suffered a neck injury along with cuts and a concussion after hitting her head on the aircraft’s ceiling.
Instagram pictures show how Rapid’s city police department bought coloring books and crayons for the kids that were in flight 429 as they waited to be transported back to Sacramento.
In May, JetBlue experienced a similar happening with a flight from Puerto Rico to Orlando; eight people were injured in the incident.
Source: CNN