Yak Field Landing

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Contact photographer Cary Liao

What: Air Tran Airways Boeing 717-200
Where: Norfolk, Virginia
When: October 26, 2009
Who: 117 passengers
Why: maneuvered to avoid another airplane during cruise-descent near Norfolk, Virginia. The 2 certificated airline transport pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 116 passengers were not injured.

One flight attendant received serious injuries, and one passenger received minor injuries.

An hour into the flight the captain had made a public address announcement to report turbulence, within seconds of when one flight attendants in the forward galley was “thrown” into the galley counter, and another “came up slightly” off her jumpseat. It appeared to both of them that the airplane had “dropped,” several hundred feet.

A flight attendants who noticed a 10 year old boy exiting an aft lavatory decided to wait to be seated until the boy had made his way back to his assigned seat when both of them were tossed to the ceiling.

An eye doctor and a retired paramedic assisted the injured until paramedics met the flight.

The operations center received an “ACARS” (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) message from the flight crew advising them that a flight attendant had fallen and a boy had a “bump on head.” They also advised that they had been descending from flight level 350 to 330 due to turbulence.

Src: NTSB report