A Southwest Airlines flight was diverted after turbulence that was so bad it caused passengers to vomit and the plane to “shake like crazy.”
Southwest flight 3094 had its landing at Raleigh in North Carolina aborted at the last moment at a height of around 1,350ft and was diverted to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina because of the bad weather.
The conditions were so poor on the Friday evening flight that one passenger even reportedly passed out as the plane came in for a landing at around 9pm.
And once diverted to Myrtle Beach, the passengers, who had got on the plane in Baltimore, Maryland, say they were stranded for hours overnight in a closed airport until a replacement plane and crew could be sent for them.
“It was quite a horrifying experience. We go to land in Raleigh and the plane starts shaking like crazy. Then they decide to tell us 15 minutes later we are going to Myrtle Beach,” Nicholas Reed told WNCN.
Once the full Boeing 737 arrived safely in Myrtle Beach the passengers were held onboard for two hours before being allowed off to sit in a deserted terminal for a further four hours.
“We couldn’t go anywhere because they wouldn’t give us our luggage,” Mr Reed said. “One group of guys found a bar and went behind it and just started pouring themselves drinks — because there was no security.”
And he added: “Coming into Raleigh they started landing like normal. We had the window open in our seat so we could actually see the ground.
“Two people were vomiting pretty close to us. But everyone was pretty silent. I guess they were just in suspense like ‘this could be it’,” Mr Reed said.
An empty plane eventually reached the group at around 1am on Saturday and they finally reached Raleigh at 4am.
“We made the decision to safely divert Southwest flight 3094 (BWI – RDU) to MYR due to weather conditions at RDU. We brought in another crew and aircraft to transport the passengers to their final destination as soon as we were able to safely do so,” Southwest said in a statement.
