Passengers terrified after Qantas flight in free fall nosedive: “We were all lifted from our seats"
A Qantas jet suffered a terrifying 10-second nosedive toward the Pacific Ocean, which left hundreds of passengers fearing for their lives.
On Sunday, QF94 was travelling from Los Angeles when the nosedive occurred. It is believed to have been caused from the plane entering a wind vortex from “wake turbulence”, caused by another Qantas plane.
Channel Nine TV personality Eddie McGuire was on-board the flight and compared the incident to a rollercoaster freefall.
"Somebody described it as the feeling of going over the top of a rollercoaster, slightly, not the fall – just a little, 'What's going on there?' There was a little bit of turning of the plane as well and a little bit of downward," he said on his Triple M radio show.
“It was one of those ones that got your attention... Then it levelled off.
"I thought the Qantas staff were fantastic. The captain of the aircraft got on and told everyone immediately, 'This is what happened, relax. That was something a bit different, we've run into these things at the moment, we're now talking to air traffic control and we're going to get a different flight path – we should be right from here.'"
Passenger Janelle Wilson told The Australian that she believed the plane was going to crash when the frightening ordeal occurred.
“It was between 1½ and two hours after we left LA and all of a sudden the plane went through a violent turbulence and then completely up-ended and we were nosediving,” Ms Wilson told newspaper yesterday.
“We were all lifted from our seats immediately and we were in a free fall. It was that feeling like when you are at the top of a rollercoaster and you’ve just gone over the edge of the peak and you start heading down.
“It was an absolute sense of losing your stomach and that we were nosediving. The lady sitting next to me and I screamed and held hands and just waited but thought with absolute certainty that we were going to crash. It was terrifying.”
The plane landed safely in Melbourne 30 minutes late and thankfully, not one passenger was injured.
A Qantas spokeswoman told The Australian there was no breach of separation standards because the Qantas aircrafts were understood to be apart by 20 nautical miles and 1000 feet in altitude.
“We understand that any sudden turbulence can be a jolt for passengers but aircraft are designed to handle it safely,” Qantas Fleet Safety Captain Debbie Slade said in a statement.
“As the Captain explained to passengers at the time, this A380 experienced a short burst of wake turbulence from another A380 flying ahead and above it.
“There are a lot of safeguards in place to reduce the likelihood of wake turbulence encounters, but it’s hard to eliminate.”