Six members of American Airlines cabin crew were injured on Sunday night during when a Miami-bound flight encountered severe turbulence.
Some of the crew on the flight from Brazil to Miami was taken to hospital upon landing whilst others were treated at the airport.
According to CBS4, many passengers were sent into panic by the incident, and it is reported that crying and screaming could be heard throughout the cabin – some passengers fearing they were going to die.
“It was a terrible experience,” Charistianne Menezes, a passenger, told CBS4′s Tiffani Helberg. “Of course I was sure that I was going to die.”
Passengers said the turbulence hit about 2 hours into the flight to Miami.
“Seems like an air pocket,” recalled Gillas Correa, one of the 143 passengers aboard the flight.
“Everything was fine and the next minute the plane just fell a huge drop. I was watching the movie and heads just dropped out…Everybody was in a seatbelt or not everybody just moved up on their seats and some of them just smashed against the ceiling.
“It was a lot of people screaming there was a lot of people crying. There was a woman who was sitting a couple rows behind us; she got thrown up in the air and landed in the hallway.”
Apparently it was crew members who took the brunt of the injuries, as they were moving about the cabin and apparently were caught by surprise when the turbulence hit.
Photo by Andrew Morrell