JEDDAH, 17 October 2006 — An Air-India plane landed at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz International Airport on Sunday night with eight passengers and two crewmembers injured in midair turbulence.
Of the injured, a 60-year-old woman has been hospitalized with a fracture of the hipbone.
In all 69 passengers and 10 crew members were on board the Airbus 310 Bombay-Hyderabad-Jeddah flight, which landed here about 10 minutes behind schedule.
“As soon as we received the message, we alerted the local airport authorities and our agents,” T. Vijayakumar, Air-India’s customer relations and senior airport manager, told Arab News yesterday.
He said that while flying over Muscat around 6 p.m., the plane suddenly entered an air pocket that prompted the captain to lower the altitude. It was so sudden that the captain had no time to alert the passengers. The seatbelt sign was immediately switched on, but passengers who were mostly in or around the toilets were hurt. All of them suffered minor injures, except the woman who developed pain in her hip.
“All the injured received first aid at the airport terminal clinic and discharged, except the woman who was moved to Jeddah Clinic Hospital at Al-Kandarah on Old Airport Street,” he said.
“I was coming out of the toilet when I fell down due to the turbulence and felt severe pain in my hip,” said Zahirunnisa from her hospital bed. A doctor attending her said X-rays showed that she had fractured her hipbone and would undergo surgery.
The flight made a return journey to Bombay two hours behind schedule. It left Jeddah at 11:55 p.m. with 198 passengers on board after airport authorities and Air-India engineers made a thorough inspection of the aircraft certifying its airworthiness.
