On January 16, 2013, an American Eagle Canadair CRJ-700 en route from New Orleans to Chicago encountered turbulence which injured flight attendants and a passenger. The pilots made a safe landing in Chicago.
If you’re buckled in, turbulence feels more dangerous than it is. Unfortunately, flight attendants, who are required to be up and about doing their jobs, are not infrequently injured by turbulence, whether it is clear-air (hard to predict changeable jet stream-rivers of air), wind shear, microbursts, mountain waves, thermal or wake turbulence left by another plane.
The physical consequences of being unbuckled when turbulence strikes means the unsecured person can be hurled about the plane, jolted in the air, struck by food carts or anything else loose in the plane. I’ve been on some white-knuckled flights where the flight attendants were champs and in spite of getting bounced around managed to calm the passengers. It’s only afterwards coming across either a cool and calm (or white-knuckled) pilot that I was able to determine just how dangerous the turbulence was.
In this case, great. A safe landing trumps everything. Too bad about the two injured flight attendants and passenger though.
Delta Airlines flight DL-923 made an emergency landing in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 16th.
