Delta Airlines announced that twenty-five people aboard a Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam were hospitalized, after the flight was diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul after encountering “significant” turbulence.
Delta flight DL56 was carrying 275 passengers and 13 crew members from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam when it was forced to divert to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport after the flight “encountered significant turbulence while en route,” the airline said in a statement. Flight 56 was diverted to Minneapolis at 6:43 p.m. and landed safely around 7:45 p.m., according to Flight Aware.
One passenger, who requested to remain anonymous, told FOX 13 Salt Lake City that the turbulence sent flight attendants flying when they were in the aisle with beverage carts: “Every one of them flew and hit the ceiling, the beverage carts also flew into the air. Any items that were loose in the cabin got thrown everywhere. [The] plane is a mess, covered in liquids and service items.”
The Metropolitan Airports Commission said that the Minneapolis-St. Paul Fire Department and paramedics responded to the gate to provide initial medical attention. Delta Airline said 25 of those on board were taken to the hospital “for evaluation and care,” and as of Thursday all have since been released.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement that a full-scale review was underway to evaluate whether the weather could have been spotted in advance: “Anyone who flies knows that we delay flights, cancel flights when weather happens. That didn’t happen here, and so we are doing a full-scale review right now to see what went wrong because again, this kind of turbulence is incredibly dangerous, and we don’t want the flying public to go through it. What we find out, we are going to remedy. We are going to get to the bottom of it.”
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