Severe Turbulence On United Flight To Newark: 7 Hospitalized!

Intro

On Friday the 29th of March, a United Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Newark had to divert to Stewart Airport due to "severe turbulence".

UAL 85 was operating its usual 11-ish hour hop on this long transatlantic route until the 787-10 hit an extremely rough patch of air near Newark.

Due to the low fuel load, with the ranges being pushed on the route for a 78X, the decision was made to divert to Stewart International Airport which is a little bit more upstate from the city.

The current reports indicate that over 200 of the 300+ people onboard were seen by medical personal and between 7 and 22 individuals were taken to hospital.

The plane was on the ground for 4 hours before flying the rest of the passengers back to Newark airport.

My Thoughts

I've seen some pretty rough turbulence, such as on my United flight to Manila. However, nothing has been nearly as bad as what happened today. My thoughts go out to those affected as it must have been a scary ordeal.

The flight map on FlightAware indicates that UAL85 followed the traditional evening approach into EWR. However, it must have initiated a go-around very close to landing as it flew right over the runway.

Following the go-around it took a sharp right turn and made its way up to Stewart.

While I understand that with fuel loads and medical emergencies, they had to get the plane on the ground as safely and quickly as possible, I can't help but wonder what went on with this patch of rough air.

There were reports of high winds in the area, but no other aircraft experienced this level of turbulence. It does happen completely randomly at times and is just a part of flying sadly. People keep saying, "It's Boeing again", but this could have happened on any aircraft, turbulence doesn't discriminate. Thankfully, it was at least on a widebody plane as it seems to be better when a plane is larger than for example a 737.

As more details are released, I will update this post with the correct facts. However, for now, this is all that is known.