A passenger whose clothes were ripped on board the Qatar Airways flight hit by extreme turbulence said of the dramatic ordeal: “It was atrocious.”
Twelve people were hurt when the Dublin-bound Boeing 787 started shaking two hours after taking off from Doha on Sunday.
Terrified passengers landing in the Irish capital told reporters how “people hit the roof” as the plane plummeted hundreds of feet over Turkey.
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One man, named only as Cathal, told RTE news the seatbelt signs were off and his dinner came off his lap.
Shown his torn shorts, he said: “Dinner came off my lap. Just food all over the plane, on the ceiling, everywhere. This managed to happen. So yeah, it was just atrocious.”
Other passengers described the terrifying scene as flight attendants were reportedly thrown in the air leaving them with horror injuries and bandaged heads.
Emma Rose Power said: “There was panic, the of panic everywhere.
“Some of the flight attendants had scratches to their faces, ice on their face. One girl had a sling on her arm.”
Eileen, who was on board with her partner Tony, described how he held her down in her seat to stop her from flying into the ceiling as she slept with a seatbelt on.
She said: “It was so scary. I am not in a hurry to get back on a plane I can tell you.”
Fire engines, ambulances and police cars rushed to Dublin Airport to meet the plane and eight people were taken to hospital for treatment when flight QR017 landed shortly after 1pm.
Qatar Airways said in a statement: “The matter is now subject to an internal investigation.”
The injuries come less than a week after Brit Geoffrey Kitchen died after turbulence on a flight.
Air hostess Eden Garrity was nearly crippled after a Thomas Cook flight from Cuba to Manchester was rocked by turbulence in 2019.
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