An intense bout of turbulence shook up passengers and crew on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul Saturday, injuring 30 people before the flight landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, authorities said.
Turkish Airlines Flight 1 hit turbulence about 40 minutes before it landed at JFK at 5:35 p.m. on Saturday, Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told BuzzFeed News.
Port Authority officials prepared for the flight's landing and made sure there were enough ambulances to transport injured passengers to the hospital, after the pilot alerted officials about injuries on board, Coleman said.
Many of the injuries were "bumps, bruises, and cuts," but one flight crew member had broken their leg during the incident, Coleman said.
Two crew members and 28 passengers were injured, Turkish Airlines said in a statement. The aircraft, a Boeing 777, carried 326 passengers and 18 crew members in total.
“The plane stated shaking — I’m talking about real shaking. Then I see people started like flying in the plane,” Sead Nikaj, a passenger on the flight, told ABC 7.
Passengers told ABC News that the turbulence had lasted for 6 minutes.
"Because the drop was so sudden, a lot of people got lifted up and hit their head, either on the ceiling or on the side of plane," Amir Mehrbakhsh, a passenger on the flight told ABC New York. "And so there were a lot of injuries pretty quickly from there."
The New York Fire Department said it treated 29 people were treated with "non-life-threatening" injuries after the flight landed.
As of Sunday, 10 people were still under medical observation, the airline said in a statement.