Hawaiian Airlines flight chaos injures dozens due to strangely moving cloud: Report

A cloud erupted vertically like a plume of smoke seconds before a Hawaiian Airlines flight last month hit severe turbulence and injured 25 people on board, according to a preliminary report Friday at the National Transportation Safety Board.

The captain of the December 18 flight from Phoenix to Honolulu told investigators that the flight conditions were smooth with clear skies when the cloud burst in front of the plane and there was no time to change course, the report says. He called the lead flight attendant and told him there might be a disturbance. Within one to three seconds, the plane “experienced severe turbulence,” the report said.

Shortly after, the lead flight attendant told the crew that there were multiple injuries in the cabin.

Twenty-five of the 291 passengers and crew on board were injured, including four passengers and two crew members who were seriously injured, the report said. The plane sustained minor damage.

Tiffany Reyes, one of the passengers who was taken to the hospital, said the next day that he had just returned to his seat from the bathroom and was about to fasten his seatbelt when the flight took off.

Suddenly, Reyes said he found himself on the floor of the aisle, staring at the ceiling panels that had caved in and a cracked bathroom sign hanging.

“I asked everyone around me, ‘Is that me?” Reyes said. “They said I apparently flew through the ceiling and crashed to the ground.”

Reyes said that at first he thought that someone had hit the plane and that it crashed, and that he thought for a moment that they were going to die because he had never encountered anything so violent in a flight.

“That was the worst experience I’ve had in my entire 40 years of life,” said Reyes.

Hawaiian Airlines Chief Operating Officer Jon Snook said at the time that such chaos was unusual, as the airline had not experienced anything like it in recent history. The fasten-seatbelts sign was in place at the time, although some of the injured were not wearing them, he said.

It happened about 40 minutes before landing in Honolulu, according to the report.

The report includes factual information but not a probable cause. That is usually included in the final report, which takes a year or two to complete.

An airline spokeswoman declined to comment on the report Friday because the NTSB investigation is ongoing.

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