Miami-bound flight hit with severe turbulence: ‘Lucky to be alive’
The plane was forced to divert to Copenhagen, despite only being 20 minutes from Canada
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Your support makes all the difference.Passengers on a flight bound for Miami were left shaken and scared after hitting severe turbulence on Friday, November 14.
Scandinavian Airlines flight SK957 was leaving Stockholm, Sweden on Friday when outside air conditions rattled the plane and its passengers to the point where the pilot decided to turn back toward Europe and land the plane, Fox 35 reports.
Sammy Solstad, a passenger on the flight, captured the terrifying incident and shared it on Facebook, saying that he felt "lucky to be alive."
In his video, personal items and other objects on the plane can be seen flying into the air before crashing back into the ground as the aircraft bounces.
It wasn't just objects taking flight — several passengers also were lifted up and out of their seats, eliciting screams from those on board as they hit the ceiling of the aircraft.
Solstad can be heard crying out for help after a woman, who wasn’t wearing a seltbelt, was injured after crashing against the roof.
He wrote on his Facebook post that the passengers on the flight begged the flight staff to make an emergency landing in Canada — which they were approaching at the time of the incident — but the pilots were forced instead to turn around and fly back to Copenhagen.
Solstad said that Canada was only 20 minutes away, but they instead were forced to endure another five hours on the plane as it diverted to Copenhagen.
Thankfully, no severe injuries were reported among the flight's 254 passengers. Once the passengers arrived in Copenhagen a "special assistance team" helped them rebook flights to Miami and provided them with hotel rooms for an overnight stay, according to CNN.
Scandinavian Airlines said in a statement that the plane underwent an inspection in Copenhagen to ensure it was safe to fly again.
“Following such turbulence, standard safety procedures require a thorough inspection of the aircraft,” the airline said in a statement.
The airline said it turned the plane around less because of the turbulence — even severe turbulence, while scary and potentially hazardous to passengers, is not likely to down a commercial airliner — but because Miami's airport did not have the space or the staff to conduct a prompt inspection of the plane when it landed.
“Since SAS do not have the necessary facilities and staff for this level of inspection in MIA, we decided to reroute the aircraft to Copenhagen (CPH), where both hangar space and qualified technicians were available,” the airline said in its statement.
It said that landing in Miami would have meant the plane would have remained grounded "for an extended period, leading to multiple cancellations."
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