Four United Airlines flight attendants were injured after a Boeing 777 hit severe turbulence during descent into Los Angeles.
The flight, carrying 190 passengers and 10 crew members, had departed Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport on Wednesday bound for LAX. United Airlines told The Post that no customers were hurt, though at least two employees suffered neck and back injuries and one required hospitalization. In-flight communications indicated the injured flight attendants are female, ages 62 and 58.
Marly Wadlington, a San Diego resident aboard Flight 1157, was watching a movie when the aircraft abruptly lost altitude. “I was watching a movie and all of a sudden we just drop,” she told ABC 7. “And it felt like we dropped pretty far. It started shaking, everyone was yelling. We were all super scared.”
Flight data reviewed by The Post shows the plane plummeted from 22,800 feet to 14,000 feet in just two minutes and 30 seconds, with descent rates reaching 3,675 feet per minute during the final roughly 20 minutes of the journey. The previous day’s United flight on the same Honolulu-Los Angeles route never exceeded 2,725 feet per minute and only briefly sustained that rate.
Another passenger, Coral Pena, heard a loud bang as the disturbance struck. “We just started falling, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” she said.
The physical force of the drop threw passengers against their restraints. Tami Dandoy from Lake Havasu saw her travel companion’s head “almost hit the top” of the cabin. “Our butts were not on the seat,” she said. Melinda Sabosky added: “We went flying — there was a little bump, and I don’t know how far down…it was a drop.”
One passenger told ABC 7 she observed a flight attendant with blood on her head and leg. The aircraft remained on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes after landing while the injured crew members stayed onboard waiting to reach a gate. The flight arrived 20 minutes behind schedule.
Radio communications captured the cockpit crew’s assessment. “It only lasted a couple of seconds, it felt like wake turbulence, but we’re smooth now,” a pilot told air traffic control. Wake turbulence occurs when one aircraft generates two counter-rotating vortices that another plane then encounters, according to the FAA, and can “impose rolling moments exceeding the roll-control authority of encountering aircraft.”
The incident comes amid ongoing scrutiny of United Airlines operations and passenger safety, though the carrier emphasized that the Boeing 777 landed without further incident and all customers disembarked safely.
