Among the many reasons that some people fear flying, in-air turbulence comes pretty high on the list.
According to numbers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, over 65,000 flights a year have some turbulence while more than 5,500 have severe turbulence. Other estimates found that instances of severe turbulence have gone up by more than 55% between 1979 and 2020 amid a changing climate.
DON'T MISS: There Is One Airline That Travelers Are Avoiding At All Costs
The latter was what occurred when, on June 29, an 11-hour Hawaiian Airlines (HA) flight from Honolulu, Hawaii to Sydney, Australia led to severe shaking that caused four hospitalizations and multiple injuries.
View the original article to see embedded media.
Here's What Went Wrong About The Shaky Hawaiian Airlines Flight
Carrying 163 passengers and 12 crew members, the Airbus A330-200 (EADSF) plane was about five hours into the flight when it started to shake first slightly and then severely.
"It was very, very smooth; there was nothing happening," Melissa Matheson, who was traveling on the flight with her husband and two children, told the Sydney Morning Herald. "And then just very unexpectedly and suddenly, we started to bump around just a little bit. And then it got bumpier and bumpier, and then it just dropped."
"The plane just dropped," fellow passenger Sultan Baskonyali confirmed to ABC News. "We weren't prepared."
The turbulence eventually stopped but, upon landing in Sydney, medical professionals who came aboard the flight discovered injuries that required one passenger and three crew members to be taken to hospital while several other passengers had more minor ones. After the turbulence abated, some were reportedly given ice packs to hold them over until landing.
Passengers aboard the flight also reported hearing claps and cheers when the plane finally landed and medical professionals entered. After landing, videos of the severe shaking that some passengers posted on TikTok quickly went viral and caught the attention of major news outlets.
While Hawaiian Airlines issued a statement saying that they "conducted a thorough inspection of the aircraft before boarding HA452," investigations around what caused the turbulence are currently ongoing. The plane itself was found not to have been related to the problem and departed on another flight two-and-a-half hours after landing in Sydney.
Despite Occasional Turbulence, Hawaiian Remains A Beloved Airline
The air above the Pacific Ocean is a notoriously turbulent zone -- in December 2022, a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Phoenix to Honolulu also hit severe turbulence that left more than 25 people injured.
Upon talking to the pilot, investigators later found that a cloud unexpectedly shot up in front of the plane.
Despite these incidents, Hawaiian Airlines remains one of the most beloved and highly-ranked airlines in the country. A recent J.D. Power survey found that the airline outpaced all others when it comes to customer satisfaction in 2022 -- even when overall satisfaction dropped by seven points amid rising ticket costs and understaffing, very few are unhappy when heading to vacation in Hawaii.
Only 5.48% of travelers polled said they would never fly with the airline again (that number was at over 21% for budget airline Spirit Airlines (SAVE)) while other surveys also found record low numbers for delays, cancellations and bumping customers due to overbooking.
