By Kolawole Ojebisi
At least eleven people were injured when a Lufthansa flight conveying 329 passengers and 19 crew members leaving Buenos Aires in Argentina, for Frankfurt in Germany encountered severe turbulence over the Atlantic.
According to Lufthansa, the turbulence occurred briefly in an intertropical convergence zone.
While speaking on the development, a spokesman of the airline noted that five of the eleven injured people were passengers while the remaining six were crew members on board of the flight.
“Unfortunately, five passengers and six crew members suffered mostly minor injuries,” a Lufthansa spokesperson told Reuters in an email, confirming a report by DPA news agency.
“The safety of the flight was not in jeopardy at any time,” the spokesperson added.
After landing safely at its planned destination on Tuesday at 10:53 am (0953 GMT), the injured received medical treatment, Mail Online reports.
Revealing what led to the injury of the passengers, industry publication, AirLive.net, reported that they unbuckled their seatbelts out of desperation in the heat of the turbulence.
According to Data from FlightRadar24 the plane, registered as D-ABYP, adding that it climbed as high as 33,000ft before encountering turbulence.
The plane’s speed reportedly dropped from 511 knots to 180 knots within a minute before returning to a cruising speed of 517 knots. Following its arrival in Frankfurt, injured crew and passengers were taken to hospital.
Recall that In a similar incident in May, a Singaporean Airlines flight experienced severe turbulence over the Irrawaddy Basin, injuring 30 and leading to one passenger’s death from a suspected heart attack.
