At least 54 passengers and crew members aboard a Taiwan EVA Air passenger jet were injured yesterday when the plane encountered turbulence as it neared Tokyo's Narita international airport, the airline confirmed.
The Airbus A330-200, with 267 passengers and crew, was approaching the airport from Taipei at 6:29pm when the turbulence occurred. Some passengers who were not wearing safety belts were thrown out of their seats, while others were hit by fallen luggage.
Most of the injured suffered cuts and bruises but 12 remain hospitalized with more serious injuries, including broken bones. EVA Air said it would not compensate the injured because air turbulence was a factor beyond its control.
The Taiwanese carrier's Airbus A300-200 alerted the airport of an emergency when it was flying over the Pacific some 100km south of Narita, the official said.
"It landed without incident at 6:29pm," said Itsuo Komori, deputy head of the transport ministry's Narita airport office.
In yesterday's incident, the Airbus jet was jolted twice right after an inflight announcement that it would start a descent in two minutes, passengers told media.
"I saw a stewardess bumping against the ceiling. I felt like I was riding on a roller coaster," a young Japanese woman told the public network Japan Broadcasting Corp.
"Some people in the toilets were also injured," she said. "Some oxygen masks came down and I heard scared little children crying."
"All of a sudden, about seven people in front of me were afloat in the air," Japanese woman Sachiko Tatara, 48, said.
It was the second air-turbulence accident in 10 days involving aircraft approaching Japan, as weather over the Japanese islands remains unstable in the early spring.
On March 18, turbulence injured four people on a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet which approached Narita from the western Pacific island of Saipan.
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