Violent Turbulence Forces Air Canada Flight to Land Early, 21 Injured
Severe turbulence injured passengers aboard a Boeing 777 operated by Air Canada, causing the flight to land early. (Photo: Wikipedia)
An Air Canada flight encountered such severe turbulence on Wednesday that terrified passengers said they thought they were dying. The Boeing 777 had to land early after 21 people were injured, including three children.
The incident happened over Alaska on a flight from Shanghai to Toronto. The plane reportedly landed in Calgary because of a trauma center there.
“It was nobody’s fault. Not the pilot’s. Everybody did the best they could,” passenger Connie Gelber told The Globe and Mail. “But honestly we felt we were dying. Like you see in the movies, where they all go up to the ceiling — everything went up to the ceiling that wasn’t anchored.”
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Another passenger, Yi Lee, said he was nervous because “you don’t know how long it will take and then you don’t know if this plane can really handle that much violence.”
Rahim Ladhani, an anchor and reporter with CTV Calgary, reported on Twitter that the turbulence “lasted a total of 45 minutes in waves ‘like a roller coaster.’ Oxygen masks came down and people started crying.” Ladhani also posted a photo of the state of the plane.
The aftermath of the turbulence onboard the Air Canada flight. (Photo: Rahim Ladhani/Twitter)
The turbulence had been expected, and in fact, the pilot had announced to passengers that the plane would be entering an area of bad turbulence. “We had certainly been warned to put our seatbelts on numerous times,” Suzanne Caudry, a Toronto-based periodontist who was on the plane, told CBC News. But no one on the plane expected such a severe situation.
According to Caudry, people’s heads “had literally hit the ceiling and actually gone through the plastic.”
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Injured passengers from the Air Canada flight being transported from the airport. (Photo: @WPXI/Twitter)
Klaus Goersch, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Air Canada said in a statement that the airline is cooperating fully with the Transportation Safety Board in its investigation of this incident and is also working to take care of passengers. “Our focus today has been on those passengers who have been injured in this incident and those other passengers on the aircraft for whom this has been a very unsettling experience,” Goersch said. “Safety is always our first priority and so any incident involving the safety of our passengers and crew is of utmost concern.”
The plane had 332 passengers and 19 crew members aboard.
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This is not the first time an Air Canada flight has experienced rough air and landed in Calgary: in 2008, a flight from Toronto from Victoria encountered such bad turbulence that 10 people were hospitalized.
And it’s not the only time turbulence has made news this year. In November, a former Aer Lingus flight attendant sued the airline after she experienced a ride so bumpy that she feared for her life.
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