By DAVID KOENIG | The Related Press
DALLAS — 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 keeping with federal security investigators.
The Nationwide Transportation Security Board mentioned the affect of touchdown was so arduous that the flight attendant thought the airplane had crashed. She felt ache in her again and neck and couldn't transfer, and was taken to a hospital the place she was identified with the fracture.
The protection board accomplished its investigation with out saying what precipitated the arduous touchdown.
The NTSB mentioned not one of the different 141 folks on board the airplane had been injured within the incident at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California.
The pilots informed investigators that they had been aiming for the traditional landing zone on the comparatively quick runway.
“Nonetheless, it ended up being a agency touchdown,” the NTSB mentioned in its ultimate report, dated Friday.
Dallas-based Southwest mentioned in a press release Monday: “We reported the matter to the NTSB in accordance with regulatory necessities and carried out an inside overview of the occasion.”
A spokeswoman for the airline declined to supply additional info when requested about the results of the inner investigation and whether or not the airplane was inspected for proof of harm that would happen throughout a tough touchdown. The airplane has been making a number of flights a day, in keeping with monitoring companies.
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 — had been informed concerning the harm to the flight attendant, who was in a soar seat in the back of the airplane.
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 airplane landed on is barely 5,700 ft lengthy (1,700 meters). By comparability, runways at close by Los Angeles Worldwide Airport vary between 8,900 and almost 13,000 ft (2,700 to three,900 meters).
The NTSB investigation was reported earlier by The Dallas Morning Information.