Moments of terror for the passengers of a flight departed from Madrid and headed to Montevideoon the morning of Monday 1 July. A plane of the Spanish airline Air Europa had to make an emergency landing in Brazil, after being hit by a turbulence which caused approximately 30 injuries among the people on board.
Turbulence on the Madrid-Montevideo flight
The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner had left Madrid at 11.55pm on Sunday 30 June bound for the Uruguayan capital, with on board 325 passengers.
Flight Ux45 was caught in turbulence off the coast of Brazil, during which several people on board, without seatbelts, were thrown against the walls inside the fuselage, suffering minor injuries in most cases.
Emergency landing in Brazil
Following the turbulence, around thirty passengers required medical attention and the request for emergency landing by the pilots.
The plane was diverted to Brazil’s Natal airport, in the north-east of the country, where it landed around 2.30 in the morning, with about ten ambulances waiting for it on the runway.
Injured among the passengers
The airline said that the passengers are already receiving the necessary treatment and that seven of the thirty injured were taken to Monsenhor Walfredo Gurgel Hospital for more serious injuries, after hitting their heads violently or suffering spinal injuries. Their health conditions have not yet been disclosed.
“Our customers will be transferred to Recife, where they will stay before reaching Montevideo,” Air Europa explained in its statement, adding that “all those who requested medical assistance are being treated in the centers in Natal.”
The latest precedents
The emergency on the Madrid-Montevideo line is only the latest episode of turbulence in airplane which caused injuries among passengers within a few weeks.
In May, a flight from London to Singapore resulted in more than fifty injuries and one death, probably from a heart attack, following a similar accident at high altitude.
A few days later, 12 more people were injured on a Qatar Airways plane flying from Doha to Dublin.
Photo source: ANSA/AFP
