A plane of the Spanish airline Air Europa was forced to make an emergency landing on the morning of July 1 in Brazil after encountering severe turbulence that left around thirty people injured. The aircraft — a Boeing 787-9 — was carrying 325 passengers, and had taken off from Madrid bound for Montevideo, Uruguay. It is the third significant event of this type in a matter of weeks.
The link
Once in front of the Brazilian coast, flight UX45 ended up in the middle of turbulence. Data provided by the Flightradar24 platform show a significant variation in speed at 36 thousand feet of altitude (about 11 thousand meters) around 6.34 in the morning (Italian time) but it is not clear at the moment whether the two events are connected.
The consequences
During the turbulence several people, who were not wearing their seatbelts at the time, were thrown against the ceiling, in some cases damaging the internal parts of the aircraft. The pilots, alerted by flight attendants, requested emergency landing in Natal, Brazil, for first aid. There were 15 ambulances waiting for the flight – the local media reported – and of the thirty injured, seven were hospitalized in the city’s hospitals, while the others “suffered minor bruises”, the carrier said in a note.
The case of the London-Singapore route
This is the third significant accident in a few weeks at high altitude and all three involved severe turbulence. On May 20, a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER from London bound for Singapore made an emergency landing in Bangkok, Thailand. A man on board lost his life – most likely due to a heart attack – and around a hundred people were injured.
The Doha-Dublin flight
On May 26, a Qatar Airways Boeing 787 — which was flying from Doha to Dublin — ran into severe turbulence while flying over Turkey. The plane duly landed in Ireland with 12 passengers and crew members injured. These events led the airlines gathered at the IATA annual meeting to include the turbulence among the events to be monitored more carefully.
