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Thirty people, including four crew members, were injured when a United Airlines plane heading for Los Angeles from Dulles hit severe turbulence and was diverted to Denver so that the injured could be treated. As the injuries, none critically with one exception, were to the head, neck or back one assumes that they involved people who were not belted-up in their seats. It must have been a frightening experience.
I have to say that my flying career of around forty years was mainly uneventful, though there was one of my colleagues who was so jinxed by the things that happened to his flights that others refused to fly with him.
Of course, there were plenty of flight delays and cancellations which I soon learned to take in my stride, and I can recall only two real incidents involving me.
The first was when the plane I was on was taking off from Auckland and an engine fell off. The flight was aborted in time and no harm came to any of us except for the shock of having the engines reversed and the plane’s front wheel carriage coming back down to earth with a loud bang. One benefit of this was that the flight was delayed by a day which gave me the chance to further explore a bit of Auckland. When I returned to the airport next day, I was surprised at the number of people who were bitching about the 24-hour delay and some had even kipped down in the airport terminal rather than venture out of it. Few seemed to believe that, perhaps, we had had a lucky escape in that the engine fell off before the flight had actually left the ground.
The second incident occurred when I was flying to Genoa from, if I remember correctly, Zurich. A drink and a meal had been served when, without any warning, the plane dropped in the sky and landed a few hundred feet lower down with a tremendous bang on Lord knows what. The pilot came on the horn and told us - as if we couldn’t have guessed - that we had hit severe air turbulence and that, while the plane was quite OK and undamaged, the hostesses were going through the plane checking to see if anyone had been injured. I can’t recall that anyone had been injured for at the time we were all buckled up. However, one good thing came out of this frightening experience - we all received a free drink!
Thank heavens I don’t have to fly anymore!
.
Thirty people, including four crew members, were injured when a United Airlines plane heading for Los Angeles from Dulles hit severe turbulence and was diverted to Denver so that the injured could be treated. As the injuries, none critically with one exception, were to the head, neck or back one assumes that they involved people who were not belted-up in their seats. It must have been a frightening experience.
I have to say that my flying career of around forty years was mainly uneventful, though there was one of my colleagues who was so jinxed by the things that happened to his flights that others refused to fly with him.
Of course, there were plenty of flight delays and cancellations which I soon learned to take in my stride, and I can recall only two real incidents involving me.
The first was when the plane I was on was taking off from Auckland and an engine fell off. The flight was aborted in time and no harm came to any of us except for the shock of having the engines reversed and the plane’s front wheel carriage coming back down to earth with a loud bang. One benefit of this was that the flight was delayed by a day which gave me the chance to further explore a bit of Auckland. When I returned to the airport next day, I was surprised at the number of people who were bitching about the 24-hour delay and some had even kipped down in the airport terminal rather than venture out of it. Few seemed to believe that, perhaps, we had had a lucky escape in that the engine fell off before the flight had actually left the ground.
The second incident occurred when I was flying to Genoa from, if I remember correctly, Zurich. A drink and a meal had been served when, without any warning, the plane dropped in the sky and landed a few hundred feet lower down with a tremendous bang on Lord knows what. The pilot came on the horn and told us - as if we couldn’t have guessed - that we had hit severe air turbulence and that, while the plane was quite OK and undamaged, the hostesses were going through the plane checking to see if anyone had been injured. I can’t recall that anyone had been injured for at the time we were all buckled up. However, one good thing came out of this frightening experience - we all received a free drink!
Thank heavens I don’t have to fly anymore!
.
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