More than 20 passengers were injured, including several with neck and skull fractures, after an Air Europa flight from Spain to Uruguay experienced severe turbulence on Monday, authorities said, marking at least the second turbulence-related incident causing serious injuries worldwide in less than a month.
Flight UX045 encountered turbulence more than four hours after taking off from Madrid, according to flight data, and made an emergency landing in the Brazilian coastal city of Natal early on Monday.
Some passengers suffered head injuries, including head, neck and chest injuries, after hitting their heads during the turbulence, Brazilian public health officials said. Thirty-six passengers were treated for injuries and 23 were taken to hospital, health and airport officials said.
Officials said some passengers who were treated were in shock but had no physical injuries. Five passengers remained hospitalized as of Monday evening, four of them in intensive care.
Passengers described terrifying scenes aboard the Boeing 787 jet, with several people flying around the cabin, and two women told news channel Telemundo that at least one passenger was ejected from their seat and pinned into the ceiling of the plane.
Two videos posted to social media showed a man lying near or above the overhead bins on the plane before being helped off by two other passengers. Other photos and videos showed damaged ceiling panels and seats.
“There was a person hanging between the plastic ceiling and the metal roof behind it, so they had to take him off,” Evangelina Sarabia, a passenger from Uruguay, told Telemundo. “The same thing happened to the baby.”
Another passenger, Romina Apay, said she was sitting next to the man who was embedded in the ceiling. “He flew off and ended up in the overhead bin and we couldn't find him,” she told Telemundo. As the plane stabilized, “people fell on top of the seats and on top of other people,” she added.
Turbulence is relatively rare in causing such serious injuries: According to the Federal Aviation Administration, only 163 serious injuries due to aircraft turbulence were reported in the United States between 2009 and 2022.
But Monday's incident was the second such incident in less than a month. In June, a 73-year-old man died when a Singapore Airlines plane he was on fell 6,000 feet in a matter of minutes, injuring more than 70 others on board.
Turbulence itself is common and not usually dangerous. Turbulence is typically caused by changes in wind speed and direction, such as a storm or jet stream, and can lead to sudden changes in an airplane's altitude and speed. Passengers who are not wearing seat belts can be lifted out of their seats by turbulence and may be injured.
Recent studies suggest that climate change could make turbulence more frequent as increasing carbon dioxide emissions affect air currents.