Twelve passengers on a Sydney-Auckland flight were hospitalized Monday after their plane, a Boeing 787, suffered a sharp acceleration caused by a technical incident, we learned from emergency services and the airline LATAM. At least one person is in serious condition, reported New Zealand paramedics, who revised the number of hospitalizations downwards, from thirteen to twelve.

Passengers reported to local media that the plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner according to the company, quickly lost altitude over the Tasman Sea, propelling everyone whose seat belts were not on to the ceiling. curly. “People were flying around because they didn’t have their seat belts on,” one passenger told RNZ radio. “Some people were really hurt. People were really scared too,” said this man, his voice trembling. Flight LA800 “had a technical incident during the trip, which caused a strong movement,” said a spokesperson for the Chile-based LATAM company without further details.

The plane, which was then to go to Santiago, “landed as planned at Auckland airport,” he said, expressing “his deep regrets for the inconvenience and embarrassment caused by this situation.” Emergency services reported being alerted around 4:00 p.m. local time (03:00 GMT) when the plane began its descent towards New Zealand’s largest city. Around ten ambulances and other medical vehicles rushed to the airport to treat the injured.

“Our ambulance crews assessed and treated around 50 patients, one of whom was in serious condition,” said Gerard Campbell of St John Ambulance New Zealand. This incident comes about two months after a problem involving another model from the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing. At the beginning of January, a door of a Boeing 737 MAX 9, operated by Alaska Airlines, came loose a few minutes after takeoff, causing a few minor injuries.

The 737 MAX had previously been grounded for almost two years after the crashes of two aircraft, the first, at the end of 2018, of the Indonesian company Lion Air, the second, at the beginning of 2019, of the Ethiopian company Ethiopian Airlines, causing more than 350 dead. In both cases, a problem with new software was the cause of the crashes.

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