Ben Pawlowski
AN Air Europa flight from Madrid to Montevideo was forced to make an emergency landing in north-eastern Brazil on Monday morning after the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner was struck by ‘severe turbulence’.
Some 40 passengers – from Spain, Uruguay, Israel, Germany, and Bolivia – were taken to hospitals in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, for medical treatment after the plane was diverted,
As of Monday afternoon, four passengers remained in hospital in a ‘stable’ condition, with local reports suggesting that some of the 325 travellers on board suffered broken bones and head injuries amid the rough turbulence.
The long-haul flight left Madrid at 11.57pm on Sunday before crew requested an emergency landing at Natal Airport, 4,000km from the Uruguayan capital, at 2.23am local time.
In a statement on X, Air Europa said that Natal ‘was the airport that could most quickly attend to passengers with medical needs’. They added that there were ‘injured passengers of varying severity’.
Passengers who were uninjured in the event were taken to Recife, the coastal city in Brazil’s Pernambuco state, where they were provided with accommodation whilst onward travel to Montevideo was organised.
The incident is the latest in a spate of cases of passengers being injured by severe turbulence.
In May, a 73-year-old British passenger died onboard a Singapore Airlines flight which was struck by turbulence and forced to divert to Bangkok.
Scientists believe that air turbulence is becoming worse with climate change, with higher temperatures provoking changes in wind speed at higher altitudes.
