At least 50 people were injured on Monday March 11 on board a LATAM Airlines plane between Australia and New Zealand after a ” Technical problem “ the airline declared to the daily New Zealand Herald. Thirteen passengers were hospitalized. One patient is in serious condition, the others have light or moderate injuries.
LATAM Airlines flight LA800, operated on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, landed at Auckland Airport as planned on Monday afternoon. It departed from Sydney and stopped in Auckland on its way to Santiago, Chile.
The flight “had a technical incident during the trip which caused a strong movement. The plane landed as planned at Auckland Airport », according to the company LATAM based in Chile. A quoted passenger says that “The plane nosedived for a few seconds and around thirty passengers were thrown head-on against the ceiling”. The incident occurred with about an hour of flight remaining. Several of the passengers were not wearing their seat belts when the plane suddenly dropped.
Series of incidents
Emergency services reported being alerted around 4 p.m. local time (4 a.m. in Paris) before going to the airport with five ambulances. “Our ambulance teams assessed the condition of around fifty patients, one of whom was in serious condition, and treated them”said Gerard Campbell of St John Ambulance New Zealand.
Boeing and LATAM did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cause and nature of the incident. The American aircraft manufacturer has been faced with a series of problems on its aircraft in recent months. A Boeing 777 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles on Thursday after losing a tire from one of its wheels during takeoff. At the beginning of January, a door stopper on a Boeing 737 MAX 9, operated by Alaska Airlines, detached from the cabin a few minutes after takeoff.