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Eleven people have been left injured after a Lufthansa flight from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt hit severe turbulence while travelling over the Atlantic on Monday.
‘Unfortunately, five passengers and six crew members suffered mostly minor injuries,’ a Lufthansa spokesperson told Reuters in an email, confirming a report by the DPA news agency.
‘The safety of the flight was not in jeopardy at any time,’ the spokesperson added.
The injured received medical treatment immediately after the aircraft landed safely at its planned destination on Tuesday at 10:53 am (0953 GMT), according to the airline.
The Boeing 747-8 had been carrying 329 passengers and 19 crew members. The turbulence was brief and occurred in an intertropical convergence zone, the company said.
Five passengers and six crew were taken to hospital after the flight landed
Emergency service vehicles transported the injured people to hospital
The turbulence was brief and occurred in an intertropical convergence zone (Seen on a virtual map)
Eleven people have been left injured after a Lufthansa flight from Buenos Aires to Frankfurt hit severe turbulence while travelling over the Atlantic (File image)
According to data from FlightRadar24, the plane, registered under D-ABYP, climbed to 33,000ft before being battered by turbulence over the Atlantic, after taking off from Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza International Airport.
AirLive.net, an industry publication, reported that as the plane climbed to 35,000ft to try and get around the pocket of bad weather, five passengers who weren’t wearing a seatbelt were injured.
FlightRadar24 data revealed that the plane’s speed dropped from 511 knots (588mph) to just 180 knots (280mph) in less than a minute, before climbing back up to a cruising speed of 517 knots.
After the plane landed at Frankfurt Airport, the injured crew and passengers were taken to hospital.
In May, a passenger died of a suspected heart attack and 30 were injured when a Singapore Airlines passenger plane was severely jolted by an air pocket over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar.