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A Southwest Airlines flight attendant fractured her spine after a hard landing in California last month.
An accident report released by the National Transportation Safety Board said the flight attendant on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 was injured during the flight coming into John Wayne-Orange County Airport in Santa Ana, just outside Anaheim, on July 1 at 5:21 p.m.
“She indicated that the plane hit the ground with such force that she thought the plane had crashed,” the report said. “She felt pain in her back, neck and she could not move.”
It was a rare injury aboard a commercial aircraft — as there were only two serious injury reports in the United States’ nearly 9 million flight hours in 2020, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Most of those injuries occur when people are walking in the plane, often during unexpected turbulence.
Paramedics took the flight attendant to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with a “compression fracture to her T3 vertebra,” according to NTSB.
No one else on board the flight was injured. The report did not assign any fault for the accident.
“The safety of Southwest’s customer and employees is always our top priority,” said a statement from Southwest Airlines. “We are concerned when any employee is injured. We reported the matter to the NTSB in accordance with regulatory requirements and conducted an internal review of the event.”
John Wayne Airport is known for flight restrictions requiring commercial airplanes to climb steeply after takeoff to comply with noise restrictions, but there are no rules in place for planes landing.
Pilots reported that they were aiming for the runway’s “touchdown zone due to its short runway and trying to fly the aircraft onto the runway with minimal floating.”
Runway 20R at John Wayne Airport is 5,700 feet and is the airport’s only commercial runway. To compare, the shortest of DFW International Airport’s seven commercial runways is 9,000 feet.
The flight attendant was seated in one of the plane’s jumpseats, with her seatbelt on in the “brace position.”
The only other injury reported aboard a Southwest flight this year was a woman who broke her ankle exiting a bathroom in May while the plane was cruising. In October 2021, a flight attendant broke her ankle when the plane hit unexpected turbulence while the crew was serving drinks.
August 09, 2022 at 02:52AM
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2022/08/08/southwest-airlines-flight-attendant-breaks-vertebra-on-hard-landing/
Southwest Airlines flight attendant breaks vertebra on hard landing - The Dallas Morning News
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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