Passengers screamed and composed their final words as a Melbourne-bound flight from Thailand plunged, throwing cabin crew into the air and showering passengers with airline food.
Former Age journalist and passenger Lyall Johnson said the plane was thrown violently up and down for 20 seconds after hitting unexpected turbulence about an hour into the V Australia flight.
Passengers had just been served meals of butter chicken, fried rice and lamb stew when the plane jerked upwards then plummeted sending food and cabin crew flying through the air.
"It was pretty much mayhem. Meals were flying everywhere, people were launching out of their seats," Mr Johnson said.
As his partner considered her last words and other passengers braced for a crash landing or screamed in fear, Mr Johnson said he watched as his drink hit the roof and a flight attendant wrestled with the food trolley to stop it crashing into passengers.
"He ended up on the ground with the trolley on top of him," he said.
Paramedics went to Melbourne Airport to meet the plane as it landed just before 8am following reports that eight people - four cabin crew and four passengers - were injured when the flight from Phuket hit turbulence north of Jakarta.
V Australia spokesman Colin Lippiatt confirmed a small number of people on board the flight "suffered minor injuries".
Mr Lippiatt said the aircraft was not damaged and described the turbulence as moderate.
"It's standard procedure that whenever an aircraft is entering turbulence that the captain would issue a public address asking people to sit down and buckle their seatbelts," he said.
"My information is that is what happened in this instance. But as you could imagine, sometimes cabin crew are out doing their work and were not sitting at the time the turbulence hit."
Mr Johnson said passengers were not given any warning of the turbulence which continued to a milder degree throughout the flight.
He heard one flight attendant comment it was the bumpiest flight in her 12-year career.
"Initially there was a lot of screaming ... there was food everywhere, red wine on the roof, white wine, the aisles were an absolute mess," Mr Johnson said. "It looked like a bomb went off."
Mr Johnson praised V Australia staff and said passengers had pulled together to clean the mess with airline blankets once the violent turbulence calmed.
"The staff were really fantastic, really cool, they couldn't have done any better," he said.
Paramedics team manager Jerome Peyton said two flight crew had suffered minor injuries during the flight.
"We are told one struck their head, the other fell over and an airline trolley landed on them.
"We have assessed those people, and no one needs treatment. It shows that our emergency response plan works well."
Mr Lippiatt said earlier reports of food poisoning on the flight were incorrect. He said one passenger had been vomiting due to a "pre-existing condition".
-------------------------------
Read more Aviation News http://smh.com.au
View Model Aircraft
No comments:
Post a Comment