Up to 40 passengers were injured when an Air Europa flight from Madrid to Montevideo encountered strong turbulence, forcing an emergency landing in Brazil.
The plane, a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with 325 people on board, was diverted from its course to Uruguay in the early hours of Monday to Natal airport in northeast Brazil.
More than a dozen ambulances waited on the tarmac to take the injured to hospital. Air Europa said that as a result of the turbulence on flight UX45, there were “seven injuries of varying degrees, as well as an undetermined number of passengers with minor contusions”.
Eleven people were still at Monsenhor Walfredo Gurgel hospital by Monday afternoon. Among the injured were citizens from Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Israel, Bolivia and Germany.
As a precaution, the airline decided not to continue to Montevideo with the same aircraft, which will undergo an inspection to determine the extent of the damage.
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The passengers would be taken to Recife in Brazil, from where they would continue the journey to the Uruguayan capital, the airline said.
A Venezuelan passenger told El Observador, a newspaper in Uruguay, that the flight was proceeding normally until the pilot announced that the plane was about to enter turbulence and asked the passengers to fasten their seat belts and remain seated.
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“After that, there was a very, very slight turbulence, you hardly felt it, and from one moment to the next, the plane abruptly fell and we all went up in the air. Those who didn’t have seat belts flew up and some of them got caught on the ceiling. It lasted about three seconds,” the passenger said.
She posted images of broken ceiling panels, with pipes and wires visible, and one photo showed emergency vehicles with flashing lights waiting on the tarmac.
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In May Geoffrey Kitchen, a 73-year-old British man died and several other passengers and crew suffered skull, brain and spine injuries when a Singapore Airlines-operated Boeing 777 encountered severe turbulence on a flight from London and was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
A week later, 12 people were injured during turbulence on a Qatar Airways Boeing 787-9 flight from Doha to Dublin.
