A dozen injured during turbulence on Qatar Airways flight
Twelve people aboard a Qatar Airways flight were injured Sunday after the plane was hit with turbulence on its way to Dublin, airport officials announced.
The flight, which came from Doha, landed at the Dublin Airport shortly before 1 p.m. and was met by emergency services after six passengers and six crew members reported injuries, the Dublin Airport said Sunday on the social platform X.
The 12 individuals were assessed on the aircraft, eight of whom were taken to the hospital, the airport added.
The Qatar Airways flight QR017 experienced turbulence while flying over Turkey, per the statement.
The Hill reached out to Qatar Airways for further comment.
The return flight to Doha was expected to take off as normal Sunday afternoon, and Dublin Airport’s flight operations were unaffected by the incident, the airport said.
It comes days after a passenger on a Singapore Airlines flight died and dozens of others were injured after it hit severe turbulence over the Indian Ocean. The flight was forced to suddenly divert to Bangkok.
The cause of the deadly turbulence has not yet been determined, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it would send a team of investigators to look into the incident.
The incident prompted questions about turbulence and whether customers should anticipate more of it due to stronger jet stream winds driven by climate change.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday warned climate change is already impacting modes of transit. He noted that while incidents like the Singapore Airlines flight are “rare,” the U.S. needs to be prepared to adapt to the changing climate.
“We’ve seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn’t statistically even be possible, threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest, to hurricane seasons becoming more and more extreme and indications that turbulence is up by about 15 percent. That means assessing anything and everything that we can do about it,” he said in a Sunday interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
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