“Our flight UX045 bound for Montevideo has been diverted to the Natal airport (in Brazil) due to strong turbulence,” Air Europa said in a post on X.
“The plane has landed normally and those who sustained different types of injuries are already being treated.”
“From one moment to the next, the plane destabilized and went into a dive. The people who didn’t have seat belts went up in the air and hit the ceiling, and they got hurt – those who had seat belts on, not so much,” one of the passengers, Maximiliano, told Reuters.
Another passenger, Stevan, told the news agency: “There are passengers with fractures and injuries to their arms, faces and legs. There are about 30 people injured. It was a pretty horrible feeling; we thought we were going to die there, but thank God it didn’t happen.”
The Spanish airline said another plane was set to depart later on Monday (Tuesday) from Madrid and pick up the passengers stranded in Brazil to continue their journey to Uruguay.
Air Europa added that anyone who needed healthcare was being treated in Brazil’s Natal International Airport.
The news comes as the latest development in a string of bad publicity for the airplane manufacturer Boeing.
While there’s no evidence so far that the injuries on the Air Europa flight had anything to do with a safety malfunction, Boeing has recently faced a series of whistleblowers alleging safety issues at the company.
Just last week, a whistleblower came forward alleging parts of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes were built in an unsafe manner – potentially leading to “devastating consequences.” A previous whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, said he found and reported similar gaps in 787 and 777 aircraft.
CNN’s Gabe Cohen, David Goldman and Gregory Wallace contributed reporting.