Delta flight diverted after being hit by turbulence, 25 passengers hospitalized

A Delta Airlines flight made an emergency landing at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Wednesday after dozens of people were injured during “significant” turbulence.

Flight 56 bound for Amsterdam took off from Salt Lake City airport at 16:30 local time (23:30 BST), before being diverted to Minneapolis. It landed just over two hours into its nine-hour flight time, at around 19:45 local time.

Medical personnel met the Airbus A330-900 to “evaluate customers and crew” after it arrived in Minneapolis, with 25 passengers then transported to local hospitals for care.

In a statement, Delta said that it is “working with customers to support their immediate needs”.

There were 275 passengers and 13 crew members on board.

In the US, there have been 207 severe injuries caused by turbulence - where an individual has been admitted to hospital for more than 48 hours - since 2009, according to official figures from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Estimates show that there are around 5,000 incidents of severe-or-greater turbulence every year, out of a total of more than 35 million flights that now take off globally.

Severe turbulence is defined as when the up and down movements of a plane going through disturbed air exert more than 1.5g-force on your body - enough to lift you out of your seat if you weren’t wearing a seatbelt.

Source: BBC

- Agencies