CNN coverage of the incident shows damaged areas of the airplane ceiling, presumably from various parts of passengers’ bodies hitting it. There were a bunch of ambulances and a city bus waiting for the injured at the terminal building.
It’s hard to convince people that seat belts in an airplane work like the ones in cars.
That article includes one of my biggest lazy media pet peeves. Editors apparently insist that every story must have a photo accompanying it, even if they don’t have any photos specifically related to the incent from the article. So they just throw in a random stock photo of a plane that just happens to be from the same airline. And in this case the photo they chose is so old, there’s an Aloha Airlines 737-200 in the background. Aloha when out of business in 2008.
ETA: And I didn’t even notice this part, since I posted before I really read the story:
The injured passengers had been on a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Phoenix, Arizona
And yet they included a photo of a Boeing 717, a short haul plane that only does hops between the islands.
In defense of the passengers, though, if they were 30 minutes away from Honolulu, they might have been queuing up for their last chance to use the lavatory before landing. I know some pilots will make a “last call to use the lavatory before I turn on the seatbelt sign for landing” announcement at around that point, which I greatly appreciate.
Agree completely about BS stock photos. I was actually surprised to see a 737-200 and a 717 in the same photo. 717s came out in ~1999 and damn near nobody in the US was still flying 737-200s by then. But per wiki, Aloha was one who was still flying them all the way to it’s demise in 2008. So at least the photo is almost certainly real, not a composite.
Upthread aways is a story about a nutcase that climbed on the wing of an Alaska Airlines 737 taxiing at Las Vegas. Over the half day or so we discussed the article, the accompanying photo kept changing. And of course they had a vid which was just a camera panning over a stock photo spliced in with cellphone footage of the actual event. Sometimes the stock photos were the same airline, sometimes not. Sometimes they were the same type of plane, sometimes not.
Yeah, policy is to warn the folks: “Last chance for potty break!”. Though better to do it sooner, like 1 hour out which is about ~30 minutes before starting downhill.
Statistically a lot more people (pax + crew) get hurt during descent than during the much longer cruise phase. If indeed they were more like 15+ minutes out as the article suggests, that’s the heart of the envelope for having to penetrate the small cumulus clouds and rain showers that are common in the tropics. Most are benign, but once in a while an innocuous looking cloud packs a real wallop. Far better to have everyone, including the FA’s, all strapped in before getting there.
Public Safety Announcement: The only way you’ll be injured in turbulence is if you’re not strapped in or the people right near you aren’t strapped in. Wear your damned seatbelt all the time you’re seated and ensure your companions do the same. That goes double for when the seatbelt sign is on. We just might know something about the ride ahead that you don’t.[/PSA].
Good video* on China’s Comac C-919, which begins commercial flights approximately today. It’s like an A-320 or 737, but a bit heavier and shorter-ranged. It seems there’s enough demand just in China for all three rivals to sell planes there, in part because of slow production (especially of the 919 and the 737)…which is partly due to the global components trade they all share.
*When it’s MentourPilot, there’s no other kind.
(Apologies if this belongs in another thread. By “general aviation,” don’t you mean little Cessnas and such, privately flown for pleasure?)
I’m AMERICAN! You can’t tell me what to do! 
FREEDOM™! FREEDOM™!
747-8 BBJ scrapped. Crazy–only 30 hours of flight time since new. What a waste. Hard to believe it couldn’t have been sold.
Over time, this thread has become about aircraft of all kinds. Kind of, you know, a general aviation thread. 
I’m sure it was intended as a General Aviation thread. I wonder if people just didn’t know what General Aviation is and just assumed the thread was about general aviation.
It’s sort of become the potpourri aviation news thread. Whether it should be is a different question.
I have no problem with it. But then, I’d charge the passengers for the damage they do to the plane.
I’m surprised someone didn’t buy it and convert it to a freighter.
Or buy it for a song and, after no doubt stunningly-expensive modifications, make it one of the new Air Force Ones.
Would this be in contention for highest cost per flight-hour? $100M to buy, fees and insurance for years, probably limited scrap value/30 flight hours. Maybe military stuff would be more, but commercially available? I mean, just the ferries from the US to the EU and back are more than half the flight hours!
It’s an omnibus thread, with no buses.
What about Airbuses?
Don’t you mean “Airbi”?
“Airbeese?”
“bussi” sounds like “BOO - sigh”.
And now United has had a turbulence incident:
Of course, ref @WildaBeast above, the accompanying photo is of an obsolete UAL plane of a different type. All the other news sites I visited had different, equally wrong, file photos. But the 747, which UAL parked a couple years ago takes the cake.
None of the articles mentioned which aircraft type it really was but based on the passenger count I’d expect a 777-200.