Local man describes ‘terrifying’ Delta flight out of Salt Lake City that hospitalized 25
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IDAHO FALLS — A local real estate agent was one of the passengers on a terrifying Delta flight on Wednesday evening that hospitalized 25 passengers.
Idaho Falls resident Andrew Schneider says he was en route to Amsterdam from Salt Lake City, on his way to a final destination in Istanbul, Turkey, when he experienced what he’s only seen in movies.
“It’s one of those experiences that you can’t really imagine until you go through it,” says Schneider. “I couldn’t have ever imagined something as terrifying as that, to be honest.”
According to CNN, the plane was carrying 275 customers and 13 crew members. Schneider was seated in Delta Comfort+ near the front of Delta flight 56, which departed from Salt Lake City at 4:30 p.m.
The Airbus A330-900 was flying over Wyoming when Schneider says he had started to notice the turbulence.
“We went through some really bad turbulence, which I know is pretty normal,” says Schneider. “But it got pretty shaky, and it was pretty bad.”
Schneider says the plane suddenly “nose-dived”, sending passengers and flight crew flying through the air, and hanging onto their chairs.
“It’s like the movies, when people just suddenly go from their seat to the ceiling,” says Schneider. “It was literally like that.”
Schneider says he had his the seatbelt on, but felt himself become “suspended in the air”, coming off his chair, comparing it to the feeling of a drop on a steep rollercoaster.
“The drink cart had landed on one of the passengers in the row right behind me,” says Schneider. “(The flight attendant) tried to pull it off of her, and then the cart was flying up in the air, and it landed on (another passenger’s) leg, and I think it broke his leg.”
During the extreme turbulence, Schneider says a flight attendant flew up into the air, hitting her head on the ceiling, which knocked her out.
“She literally was talking to us personally and said, ‘All I remember is waking up on the ground and people were asking me if I’m okay and trying to help me up,'” says Schneider, “She hit the ceiling really hard and came down to the floor.”
Schneider says another woman cracked open an overhead compartment with her head.
“Two or three rows up ahead of me, another lady wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and she cracked the overhead bin with her head,” says Schneider, “We had 25 people that had to go to the hospital.”
Schneider says the cabin was full of people having panic attacks, screaming, and trying to console each other.
“It’s super surreal because when that happened, people are screaming, people are praying, and you could hear people just pleading with God that we’d survive,” says Schneider. “I think the saddest part was hearing the kids cry. I can only imagine how scary that was for them.”
Flight attendants worked hard to update the passengers on the next steps, which eventually led to the flight being diverted to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“There was a flight attendant guy that was older, and he was talking to some passengers a few rows up from me, and he said that in all his 38 years, he’s never experienced that one time,” says Schneider. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Delta provided Schneider and the other passengers with a free hotel stay for the night in Minneapolis and a free Uber ride to the hotel. So far, he hasn’t heard anything else from the airline.
“Going through something like that, everything’s a little hazy,” says Schneider. “Basically, what I could get out of it is they lost contact with traffic control, and we were flying blind. We hit a really bad air bubble, and it caused all that turbulence.”
According to a news release from Delta Thursday afternoon, many of the passengers and flight crew have been released from the hospital. It is not clear how many are still hospitalized.
“All seven crew members who were taken to area hospitals after the flight landed were treated and released by Thursday morning,” says the release. “All customers who were evaluated at the hospital and willing to share their status with Delta have also been released.”
The airline says it will “operate a special flight from MSP to AMS Thursday evening so customers may continue with their journey.”
After the incident, Schneider says he considered cancelling his trip and returning home to Idaho Falls, but says he doesn’t want to let the rare experience keep him from traveling.
“I have the choice, I guess. I can feel nervous (and) scared, or accept that it was like a one out of 10 million chance of that happening,” says Schneider. “Honestly, I don’t really want to think about it much, but, you know, it’s hard not to.”