An Air Canada flight headed to Sydney in Australia was diverted to Honolulu on Thursday after turbulence injured dozens of people aboard.
Air Canada Flight 33, which had taken off from Vancouver, was about two hours past Hawaii when it flew into “sudden” rough air, airline officials said, according to Hawaii News Now. The plane landed at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport at 6:45 a.m. local time where emergency responders had gathered.
“We hit turbulence and we all hit the roof and everything fell down, and stuff … people went flying,” a passenger named Jess Smith told KHON.
Officials said roughly 35 people sustained minor injuries and at least nine were sent to area hospitals.
Some people aboard the flight described a frightening 10 to 15 seconds in which they saw oxygen masks coming down and fellow passengers hitting their heads on the ceiling of the cabin as they were not wearing their seat belts.
Update Air Canada #AC33 passenger Michael Bailey says turbulence occurred without warning, “we hit turbulence, it was pretty quick, a lot of people hit the ceiling… must have dropped a 100 ft & everyone went up to the ceiling throughout the plane.” Airlines says 35 people hurt. pic.twitter.com/ZO2mjda89E
— Tom Podolec Aviation (@TomPodolec) July 11, 2019
“I saw the people ahead of me hitting the overhead baggage compartments and then just slamming back into their seats,” Alex Macdonald, a passenger from Brisbane, Australia, told CBC. “[It] was just a bunch of noise, people extremely shocked, and then a very eerie stillness throughout the cabin as people tried to grasp what had happened.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Boeing 777-200 encountered the turbulence at at 36,000 feet approximately 600 miles southwest of Honolulu and the crew had requested medical personnel meet the aircraft at the gate.
There were 269 passengers and 15 crew members aboard the plane and local reports said officials sought to make hotel and meal accommodations for the people in Honolulu.
