A horror flight through hail: Passengers of flight OS 434 from Mallorca to Vienna report on the anxious minutes on board.
On a flight from Mallorca to Vienna last Sunday, a pilot had to radio “Mayday” after the plane was caught in a hailstorm over Styria. After landing, the plane had hundreds of impacts and cracks, and the cockpit windows were completely shattered, as international media also reported.
Apparently, terrifying scenes were taking place inside the plane: “Suddenly we were shaken up,” the “Bild” newspaper quoted a 45-year-old passenger as saying. People panicked, some sought shelter in the footwell.
More on the topic: Flight from Mallorca to Vienna – landing blind! Pilot lands plane without nose
“I think we were about 20 minutes from landing when we hit a hail cloud and a thunderstorm and the turbulence started… We could definitely feel the hail falling on the plane and it was quite loud and of course very bumpy for a minute,” ABC quoted another passenger as saying.
The plane would have taken about two minutes or less to fly through the hailstorm. “Cell phones and cups” were flying around, as the passenger told the US media.
Following this incident, Austrian Airlines has launched an investigation to find out why the pilot flew through a hailstorm, as “oe24.at” reports. In addition, an accident commission is now investigating why neither the pilots nor Austro Control had the storm cell on their radar.
An experienced pilot told Focus online that it is very difficult to use weather radar to distinguish whether you are flying into an area with heavy rain or hail. “The danger zone appears dark on the radar, but the amount of water can be misleading,” said the expert. He was not surprised that the plane landed safely. Airplanes are tested for all eventualities, and hail is also the subject of simulations and tests.
A whimpering, seriously injured little girl was found in a cat box in Berlin in the Altglienicke district in front of an apartment building.
Because her luggage didn’t arrive, a woman took the initiative herself. She tracked her apparently stolen suitcase and drove to the house of an airport employee, where she actually found it.