JetBlue Flight 429 left Logan at 5:25 p.m. Thursday and landed in Rapid City, South Dakota, around 7:30 p.m., the airline says.
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Passengers flew out of their seats, with several of them hitting their heads into the ceiling and overhead compartments as the plane dropped violently.
Derek Lindahl told CNN that he saw a woman who wasn’t wearing a seat belt rise two feet out of her seat. After hitting the turbulence, crew members asked for medical assistance from passengers.
“People were being tossed around like rag dolls”, she said.
The plane encountered a line of thunderstorms in central South Dakota, according to a flight path analysis by CNN meteorologists Monica Garrett and Chad Myers.
Lee, an orthopedic surgeon flying to Sacramento to start a new job on Monday, told NBC that passengers had been warned to return to their seats and get buckled in before the turbulence got really bad.
“While some turbulence can’t be detected on radar, this was not that kind”, said Brandon Miller, a producer with CNN’s World Weather team. What they shouldn’t have to contend with is severe turbulence caused by thunderstorms that were visible from both radar and the cockpit.
The weather was apparently so rough that the pilots were forced to land the plane in Rapid City, where emergency crews promptly boarded the aircraft to treat the two dozen injured passengers.
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Instagram pictures show how Rapid’s city police department bought coloring books and crayons for the kids that were in flight 429 as they waited to be transported back to Sacramento.
