Continental Jet Lands After Turbulence Injures Dozens (Update3)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a_NseQvHT0xs
By Mary Jane Credeur
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A Continental Airlines Inc. jetliner made an emergency
landing in Miami after turbulence injured as many as 37 people flying to
Houston from Rio de Janeiro.
Fourteen passengers were taken to the hospital, four with “serious”
injuries, said Lieutenant Elkin Sierra, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Fire
Rescue Department. No injuries appeared to be life-threatening and most
travelers who sought treatment were “just bumped and bruised,” he said.
The Boeing Co. 767-200 was about an hour from Miami when the injuries forced
the pilots to divert at 5:35 a.m. local time, said Dave Messing, a spokesman
for Houston-based Continental. Flight 128 had 168 passengers and 11 crew
members.
“People were jolted up and down and sideways,” said Sierra, adding that
some passengers hadn’t buckled their seat belts. “They hit the sides of the
airplane, and each other.”
Several people had to be placed on stretchers and have their necks or backs
stabilized, which is standard procedure with such injuries, Sierra said.
The incident occurred in clear-air turbulence southeast of Puerto Rico at
about 36,000 feet (10,973 meters), said Les Dorr, a Federal Aviation
Administration spokesman. There was no structural damage to the plane or
injury to the crew, he said.
Seatbelt Sign
The seat belt sign was on at the time, Messing said.
Continental Flight 128 left Rio de Janeiro at 9:45 p.m. yesterday and was
scheduled to arrive at Houston at 6 a.m.
Fire officials’ tally of 14 people taken to the hospital was different than
the count of 9 given earlier by Continental, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier.
Airline spokesmen didn’t respond to requests for further comment.
Turbulence accounted for 22 percent of all U.S. airline accidents from 1996
to 2005 and was responsible for 49 percent of the serious-injury accidents,
the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report in March.
In June, an Air France Airbus SAS 330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean en
route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after flying through severe thunderstorms
with updrafts of 100 miles (161 kilometers) per hour, according to
AccuWeather.com. All 228 people on board were killed. The cause of the crash
remains under investigation.
One passenger was killed in December 1997 when a United Airlines Boeing 747
encountered a “wave action” of turbulence that caused the jetliner to rise
and descend about 50 feet after it had departed from Tokyo en route to
Honolulu. Fifteen passengers and three flight attendants received serious
injuries, according to an NTSB report.
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