Severe turbulence in Indian SpiceJet injures passengers

A severe turbulence caused injuries to about 17 people on board a SpiceJet flight in India before landing on Sunday evening.

The Boeing 737 was carrying about 200 passengers and crew while travelling from Mumbai to Durgapur.

India's civil aviation regulator has ordered an investigation into the incident. In a statement, it said that the plane had experienced "severe turbulence" during descent, and the "auto-pilot got disengaged for two minutes and the crew manually flew the aircraft", reports BBC.

Amit Baul, one of the passengers, recalled the disturbing ordeal saying, "The plane began bouncing up and down like a ball."

He recounted, "It was a warm Sunday evening in Mumbai when we took off at 5.13 pm for a two-hour-flight to the eastern city of Durgapur, where I live and work as a businessman."

"There was nothing out of the ordinary during the flight: the plane was packed to capacity, food was served on time and passengers were either dozing or glued to their mobile phones. I had flown between Mumbai and Durgapur half-a-dozen times in the last four months, and preferred SpiceJet because it offers a non-stop flight.

Thirty five minutes before the scheduled landing I felt some light turbulence. Again, nothing unusual about that. I was seated in an aisle seat in the last row, and fastened my seat belt," he continued.

As we began descending, things got worse:  Amit Baul

The next 15-17 minutes were the worst moments of my life.

I don't know whether we flew into a storm but the plane began bouncing up and down and sideways. The Boeing 737 was going up and down like a rubber ball.

It felt like being dropped from a 100-storey building and then being kicked up to those heights in a matter of seconds. I tightened my seat belt and held on tightly to the seat handle.

I saw passengers, who had possibly forgotten to fasten their belts, being bounced up and down from their seats and hitting the overhead baggage bins. They were getting severely hurt. Two men sitting next to me also got a little hurt because they possibly hadn't tightened their belts.

Sitting in front of me was a woman with her 11-year-old daughter. They were flung up from their seats a number of times, with their heads hitting the luggage bin. The final time, the woman came down and landed on my feet, which were sticking out into the aisle. She was so badly hurt that she stayed on the floor, clinging on to the seat handles.

We thanked the pilots profusely and stepped out into a hot summer evening in Durgapur. But the worst was to yet come.

It took an hour for the ambulances to arrive and take away the injured passengers to the hospital. There were no doctors in sight.

A paramedic of sorts was giving out painkillers and putting on bandages. There weren't enough wheelchairs. Many passengers limped to the arrival hall. It was clear that the airport in Durgapur had no basic medical facilities.

When I went to the hospital later in the evening to get an X-ray of a swelling in my foot, I saw many of my fellow passengers getting treated for wounds and getting scans. I found out that the woman in the front seat had suffered very severe injuries in her stomach and shoulders.