More than 200 passengers were bound for Miami, Florida, when turbulence on the Scandinavian Airlines flight was so severe, the crew decided it must retreat to Europe
A busy plane turned around hours into a flight due to extreme turbulence.
The Scandinavian Airlines flight left Stockholm for Miami, Florida, on Thursday and, despite reaching the Canadian border, had to go back the other way. Turbulence buffeted the plane, in which 254 passengers, including one baby, were travelling.
The airline said the aircraft needed to be checked for technical issues and it doesn’t have the right equipment for this at Miami, so instead the pilot had to turn around and head for Copenhagen, the company’s headquarters.
But this decision was made when the nine-hour journey was almost complete, reports claim. Passengers will have to fly all the way back, and were offered hotel rooms in Copenhagen for Thursday night. They will be flown to Miami on Friday, the airline has confirmed.
No one was seriously hurt as a result of the turbulence but pictures shared on social media show the damage the sudden changes in pressure caused. Items, such as plastic cups, paper bags and one passenger’s rucksack, are scattered all over the floor in one shocking image.
It follows difficulty faced by crew on a Lufthansa flight, which ran into extreme turbulence in mid-air earlier this week. The plane, a Boeing 747-8, had taken off from Buenos Aires in Argentina and was en route to Frankfurt in Germany when it experienced a brief period of severe turbulence over the Atlantic.
A spokesperson for Lufthansa blamed the incident on tropical air currents. Eleven people were hurt on that occasion, although no injuries were reported among those travelling on the Scandinavian Airlines plane.
Scandinavian Airlines said a team received passengers at Copenhagen and dealt with any issues. It apologised for the inconvenience but said the passengers will reach Miami on Friday, following their night in the hotel at the airport in the Danish capital. The Mirror has contacted Scandinavian Airlines, Denmark’s flag carrier airline, for a full statement.
