NTSB describes the turbulence that threw passengers around the cabin on a Delta flight

By JOSH FUNK Passengers who weren t buckled aboard a Delta Air Lines flight to Europe would have been violently thrown into the ceiling and back down to the floor in July when the plane encountered severe turbulence in a thunderstorm over Wyoming according to a new document on the situation Related Articles Scientists are baffled by a powerful and long-lasting gamma ray explosion outside our galaxy More than containers fall off ship in California port Boston-area ICE surge leads to bold-faced lies from Massachusetts pols Territory line czar Homan Israeli-Russian graduate aspirant kidnapped in Iraq has been disclosed Trump and family say Supreme Court to hurriedly consider if President Donald Trump has power to impose sweeping tariffs The National Transportation Safety Board commented Tuesday that passengers endured minutes of turbulence that caught the pilots by surprise on July even though they had already altered their journey to try to avoid the storms The seat belt sign was off so passengers flight attendants and drink carts were thrown around the plane The flight took off from Salt Lake City and was bound for Amsterdam but it diverted to Minneapolis where people were evaluated by paramedics and were taken to hospitals Two crew members sustained serious injuries and five sustained minor injuries The preliminary document described how passengers were thrown upwards with a force equal to three-quarters of their body weight that the NTSB estimated at g Then they were pulled downward by a force equal to half their body weight That s a lot of force That s like a muscle man grabbing you by the shoulders and with all of his strength trying to pull you up mentioned aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for the NTSB and FAA If you re standing and you experience those types of forces you re going to be thrown upward into the ceiling and then back down again onto the floor with a lot of force Guzzetti announced that enduring turbulence that lasted that long would seem like an eternity for the passengers feeling those forces The NTSB also reported the plane s wing dipped down as much as degrees at one point and Guzzetti revealed that would have alarmed passengers That fits with what passengers described afterward They hit the ceiling and then they fell to the ground Leann Clement-Nash communicated ABC News And the carts also hit the ceiling and fell to the ground and people were injured It happened several times so it was really scary The analysis explained that the pilot had turned off the seatbelt sign and flight attendants had begun drink arrangement shortly before the plane encountered the turbulence The pilots likely concluded they were in the clear after asking air traffic controllers to passage them around the storms But the NTSB charted the plane s flight path over a radar analysis from the National Weather Utility that demonstrated the plane flew directly into a bright red section of the map showing the worst of the storm Guzzetti announced the NTSB will investigate whether the pilots and crew did enough to avoid the storms and whether the pilot made a good judgement in turning off the seatbelt sign Serious injuries from in-flight turbulence are rare but scientists say they may be becoming more common as surroundings change alters the jet stream Several turbulence incidents have been disclosed this year which only added to the concerns about aviation safety after the worst aviation tragedy in years In January a midair collision over Washington D C killed people A plane also flipped over as it crashed in Toronto in March