Turbulence Injures 6 and Reroutes Plane

A commercial flight traveling from Philadelphia to Orlando encountered fierce turbulence on Sunday, officials and passengers said, injuring six people and prompting the plane to return to Philadelphia.

The US Airways flight had hit an altitude of about 17,000 feet before it hit a patch of turbulence and was rocked violently for 5-10 seconds, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Four passengers and two flight attendants were injured, but none of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening. The fasten-seat-belt sign was on at the time.

“For a couple seconds there, nobody was controlling that airplane,” passenger Mark Pensiero, 58, told the Inquirer. “It was doing what it wanted to do.

After returning the Philadelphia, another plane took the passengers to Atlanta at about 8 p.m.

[The Philadelphia Inquirer]