The plane was rocked by severe turbulence and caused passengers to be thrown from their seats. Videos and photos from the plane show a chaotic scene with blood smeared on the ceiling as passengers can be heard weeping and praying. According to passengers, the aircraft made a sudden drop that caused a mass number of injuries to take place.
Passenger Amir Mehrbakhsh told ABC News: “There was like one or two seconds when it was subtle, but then it really started to pick up.
“Just because the drop was so sudden, a lot of people got lifted up and hit their head either on the ceiling or on the side of the plane, and so there were a lot of injuries pretty quickly.”
Passengers complained they were not notified to expect turbulence, and the seatbelt lights were not on.
Another passenger Sead Nikaj, told the network “nobody announced it or anything like that so we figured out something was wrong.
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“Then I see people start flying on the plane.
“Then seeing blood all over.
“I had one of the ladies next to me, she really fell down from her seat on the floor and all her back was completely bloody, while someone that was working in the airplane, she cracked her leg I think completely.”
The turbulence as the flight was set to land at John F Kennedy Airport in New York City on Saturday.
Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said that 28 people were taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Centre in Queens to treat injuries.
One of the flight attendant’s broke their leg.
The airline said it is “deeply saddened by this unfortunate experience, and closely monitors the health status of injured passengers, and is making resources available to them”.
There was another incident earlier on Sunday when Newark Liberty International Airport was forced to temporarily close its runways after a flight from Montreal to Florida made an emergency landing because of smoke in its cargo hold.