‘Scary’: Airline passenger tells of hitting ceiling

In an instant, Reyes found himself standing on the hallway floor, staring up at the sunken ceiling and the broken bathroom sign hanging from it.

“I asked everyone around me, ‘Is that me?’ Reyes said in an interview on Monday. “They said I obviously flew up to the ceiling and hit the ground. “

Reyes, 40, was one of 20 passengers and crew on board a Phoenix-to-Honolulu plane that was hit by turbulence without warning on Sunday and was taken to hospital. Eleven are in serious condition. In total, 36 people were treated for lumps, bruises, cuts and nausea, said Honolulu Emergency Medical Services Director Jim Ireland.

This composite of cell phone images, kindly provided by passenger Jazmin Bitanga, shows the interior of the Hawaiian Airlines plane after severe turbulence from Phoenix to Honolulu (AP)

Reyes picked up daughter Kelly from college. She initially thought something had hit the plane and it was crashing. For a moment she thought they were going to die because she had never experienced anything this violent on a flight before.

“It was the most horrific experience I’ve ever had in my 40 years of life,” Reyes said. Reyes did not bleed. The adrenaline rushing through her relieved the pain that would eventually arise. She crawled back into her seat. And her daughter, who was buckled up and unhurt, “held me the whole time.”

Others fared worse, Reyes said. She saw a woman step off the plane with a gash on her head and blood on her face and clothes. An ambulance took Reyes to the emergency room, where she underwent X-rays, blood draws and various other tests. After five hours there, she and her family — her daughter, son and husband — went home to decompress. Her headaches started to subside Sunday night. But the left side of her body started to hurt.

“I couldn’t even move around in bed,” Reyes said. “So I had to sleep on my back and couldn’t even move.” The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday it was investigating the incident. There were nearly 300 people on board the entire flight, including many on vacation to Hawaii, such as Jacie Hayata Ano, who was returning home.

“It’s just rocks,” she told KHON-TV. “Then it quickly escalated to the point where we were shaking so much that we were almost floating off our chairs.”

Hawaiian Airlines Chief Operating Officer Jon Snook said the upheaval was isolated and unusual, noting the airline had never experienced anything like it in its recent history. Three flight attendants were injured, he said. Jazmin Bitanga, who was also home for the holidays, said she suffered two altitude drops, one of which was so steep that her boyfriend’s water bottle fell through the ceiling of the plane.

“Right around me, there were people crying,” she told Hawaii News Now.

During the turbulence, some damage occurred inside the plane, Snook said. Fasten seat belt signs were illuminated at the time, although some of the injured people were not wearing seat belts, he said. Airlines were aware of the forecast for thunderstorms and unstable air and weather conditions, but did not warn of specific patches where turbulent air was “dangerous in every way,” Snook said. He didn’t know how much altitude the plane lost in the turbulence, and said that would be part of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation. The plane’s flight data recorder will provide those details, he said.

He said the investigation would also address exactly what happened to the passengers and crew at the time. The Airbus A330-200 began descending immediately after the turbulence occurred, Snook said. Due to the number of injuries on board, the crew declared an emergency and air traffic controllers gave the flight priority to land. Snook said the plane will undergo a thorough inspection and maintenance, primarily repairing components in the cabin. Snook said he could only speculate on whether a passenger hit his head, but that was likely based on injuries and damage to cabin paneling.

“If you’re not wearing your seatbelt, you’re going to stay where you are when the plane crashes, and that’s how you get injured,” Snook said.

He said the investigation would examine what other measures were taken to ensure passengers were wearing their seat belts, in addition to unfurling the fasten seat belt signs. High wind warnings and flood warnings were issued for Hawaii on Monday as a strong front moved across the islands, according to the National Weather Service.

Severe turbulence hit a United Airlines flight from Rio de Janeiro to Houston on Monday. Two passengers and three crew members suffered “minor injuries” and were taken to hospital shortly after the flight landed at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the airline said. The airline did not describe the nature of the injuries.

A 2021 NTSB report on preventing injuries from turbulence on scheduled passenger flights says wearing a seat belt can reduce the risk of serious injury. It also found that air traffic control procedures for handling weather reports from pilots were “time-consuming and irregular”.

Airlines often share observations of turbulence with their own personnel, but not across the entire national airspace system, the report said. In 2019, an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Sydney encountered severe turbulence about two hours after passing through Hawaii, injuring 37 passengers and crew. The Boeing 777-200 was diverted to Honolulu, where the injured were treated.

Thirty people were taken to hospital, nine seriously injured. Most people associate turbulence with storms. But the most dangerous type is so-called clear-air turbulence. Wind shear can occur in sparse cirrus clouds, or even in clear air near thunderstorms, because differences in temperature and pressure create strong, fast-moving air currents. Airplanes can fly into clear-air turbulence without warning.