Turbulence on US-bound plane injures 47

by Jarkko on February 21, 2009

: Image by Toby Simkin via Flickr

Forty-seven people were injured Friday when a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 hit turbulence on the Manila-Tokyo leg of a US-bound flight, airport officials said.

The turbulence hit the plane while it was circling off the coast of Chiba, east of Tokyo, about 30 minutes before landing, said Masashi Takahashi, a spokesman for Northwest Airlines in Tokyo. The plane suddenly descended, sending passengers without their seatbelts fastened lurching from their seats, he said. The flight landed at the nearby Tokyo international airport around noon, Takahashi said.

Kenichi Fujii, a fire department official, said 47 people suffered injuries, none of them life-threatening. He had no further details. The Boeing 747-400 plane was carrying 408 passengers and 14 crew members.

“The plane started swaying left and right all of a sudden, then people flew up,” a male passenger told the TV Asahi network. “They bumped hard against the ceiling twice. It left at least three holes in the cabin ceiling as far as I could see.”

An American passenger said people were flying inside the plane. “We were flying and then the seatbelt sign came on and when we were trying to get back to the seats, the plane dropped and so some people went up and hit the top (ceiling),” Vincent Salazar told Kyodo News. “… And unfortunately some people weren’t in their seatbelts. They were just flying.”