A Lufthansa flight that experienced “significant turbulence” was diverted to Washington Dulles International Airport and seven people on board were taken to area hospitals, officials said.
Flight 469 from Austin, Texas, had been headed to Frankfurt,
Germany, but landed safely Wednesday evening at the airport in Virginia,
Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority spokesman Michael Cabbage said.
Crews responded to the flight and took seven people to
hospitals with injuries that were believed to be minor, Cabbage said.
The Airbus A330 reported severe turbulence at an altitude of
37,000 feet (about 11,300 meters) while flying over Tennessee, the Federal
Aviation Administration said in a statement. The agency is investigating.
Passenger Susan Zimmerman, 34, of Austin, Texas, said one of
the pilots told the cabin that the plane had fallen about 1,000 feet (about 305
meters) during the episode, which came on suddenly.
“It felt like the bottom just dropped out from underneath,”
she said in a phone interview. “Everything was floating up. For a moment, you
are weightless.”
The brief but severe turbulence occurred about 90 minutes
after takeoff and led to the unscheduled landing as a precaution, Lufthansa
said in a statement. After landing, the affected passengers received medical
attention and Lufthansa ground staff were working to rebook passengers, the
airline said.
“The safety and well-being of passengers and crew members is
Lufthansa’s top priority at all times,” the statement said.
Turbulence continues to be a major cause of accidents and
injuries during flight, according to a 2021 NTSB report. Turbulence accounted
for 37.6% of all accidents on larger commercial airlines between 2009 and 2018.
Turbulence is essentially unstable air that moves in an
unpredictable fashion. Most people associate it with heavy storms. But the most
dangerous type is clear-air turbulence, which can be hard to predict and often
with no visible warning in the sky ahead.
Storms moved across areas of Tennessee on Wednesday night,
creating strong winds in the upper atmosphere, said Scott Unger, a senior
forecaster with the National Weather Service in Nashville.
“It was very windy aloft, which could lead easily lead to
the possibility of turbulence with any flight,” he said.
The turbulence occurred during the middle of meal service
and passengers and crew were moving throughout the cabin, said Zimmerman, who
is five months pregnant. She said she still had her seatbelt on and that
neither she nor her baby were injured.
“I’m pretty sure she slept through it,” she said. “She’s
surrounded in amniotic fluid.” -AP
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