Yesterday afternoon, an Air Europa plane going from the Spanish capital of Madrid to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, had to be diverted to Brazil as it encountered severe turbulence that led to passengers flying through the cabin.
While going over the Atlantic Ocean, flight UX045, operated on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, encountered severe turbulence and was diverted to Natal Airport, in Brazil, where it landed safely, according to a post shared by the airline on X.
“From one moment to the next, the plane destabilized and went into a dive. The people who didn’t have seat belts went up in the air and hit the ceiling, and they got hurt – those who had seat belts on, not so much”, one of the passengers told Reuters, while another described how people fractured and injured their faces, arms and legs and they all thought they “were going to die”.
“A person was left hanging between the plastic ceiling and the metal roof behind it, and they had to be brought down. The same thing happened to a baby”, Evangelina Saravia, a passenger from Uruguay, told Telemundo, with videos shared o X showing someone’s feet dangling from the overhead compartments.
From the 325 passengers aboard the plane, at least 30 were treated for injuries on the spot upon arrival at the airport in Brazil, according to a local medical team, with 10 of them transported to the hospital with more serious injuries, including neck and skull fractures.
Earlier today, Air Europa confirmed that passengers able to travel were already back on their way to Montevideo, on a flight scheduled to land at 7:20 am local time. Meanwhile, people who still require medical attention are being treated at different centres in Natal, where airline personnel has also been sent to attend to their needs.
Less than two months ago, over 30 people were injured and one died aboard a Singapore Airlines flight encountering severe turbulence over the Bay of Bengal. Another 12 passengers were injured on a Qatar flight encountering turbulence over Türkiye at the end of May. Although normally not very frequent, climate experts are predicting turbulence, and specifically severe turbulence, is likely to become more extreme with global warming.
