Southwest Flight Attendant Suffers Broken Back In Hard Landing In California

A Southwest Airways flight attendant suffered a compression fracture to a vertebra in her higher again throughout a tough touchdown final month in California, in response to federal security investigators.

The Nationwide Transportation Security Board stated the influence of touchdown was so arduous that the flight attendant thought the aircraft had crashed. She felt ache in her again and neck and couldn’t transfer, and was taken to a hospital the place she was recognized with the fracture.

The protection board accomplished its investigation with out saying what triggered the arduous larding.

The NTSB stated not one of the different 141 folks on board the aircraft have been injured within the incident at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California.

The pilots instructed investigators that they have been aiming for the traditional landing zone on the comparatively brief runway.

“Nevertheless, it ended up being a agency touchdown,” the NTSB stated in its ultimate report, dated Friday.

Dallas-based Southwest stated in a press release Monday, “We reported the matter to the NTSB in accordance with regulatory necessities and performed an inner evaluate of the occasion.”

A spokeswoman for the airline declined to offer additional data when requested about the results of the interior investigation and whether or not the aircraft was inspected for proof of injury that would happen throughout a tough touchdown. The aircraft has been making a number of flights a day, in response to monitoring providers.

Shortly after the 18-year-old Boeing 737-700 taxied off the runway, the pilots — a 55-year-old captain and 49-year-old co-pilot — have been instructed concerning the harm to the flight attendant, who was in a leap seat in the back of the aircraft.

The NTSB, which didn’t journey to the accident web site, has not made its paperwork from the investigation publicly accessible.

The runway that the aircraft landed on is barely 5,700 toes lengthy (1,700 meters). By comparability, runways at close by Los Angeles Worldwide Airport vary between 8,900 and almost 13,000 toes (2,700 to three,900 meters).

The NTSB investigation was reported earlier by The Dallas Morning Information.