|
The
New York Fire Department said it was treating 29 passengers for
"non-life-threatening injuries" at the airport, after having
initially reported the number on Twitter at 32.
Most of the injuries aboard Turkish Airlines Flight 001 from
Istanbul were minor, according to Steve Coleman, spokesman for
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates
JFK Airport.
"The majority of them were bumps, bruises and cuts," he said.
"I'm not aware of any life-threatening injuries at this point."
The 10 passengers sent to a local hospital included a child and
one with a possible broken leg, he said.
The airliner, carrying 326 passengers with a crew of 21, ran
into "severe turbulence" about 45 minutes before landing at 5:35
p.m. EST (1035 GMT), Coleman said.
Turkish Airlines said 28 passengers and two cabin crew were
slightly injured due to "unforeseeable weather conditions", 18
of the 28 passengers were taken to a hospital, and 10 of them
remained under medical observation as a precaution.
"We keep closely monitoring the health status of these
passengers and our team," the airline said in a statement.
The National Weather Service's Aviation Weather Center had
issued an advisory for severe turbulence over New England on
Saturday evening.
Turkish Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
It was the second incident at a major New York-area airport on
Saturday. New Jersey's Newark airport closed its runways earlier
in the day after a cargo plane flying to Florida from Canada was
forced to make an emergency landing.
(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Daniel Wallis in New York;
Editing by Diane Craft)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
