A Delta Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing after a storm and severe turbulence batted the aircraft.
According to Popular Mechanics, the plane was en-route to LaGuardia Airport from Palm Beach International earlier this week.
“We went through the storm and there was severe turbulence like I’ve never felt before,” producer Brooke Goldman told the publication. She was one of 43 passengers on board the flight.
“Definitely a bit scary, but overall, not incredibly concerning. We landed at JFK and I honestly didn’t know we were there at first until the pilot let us know that we were at JFK due to an emergency landing.”
Delta flight to LGA diverted to JFK after it was hit by hail tonight. Wow pic.twitter.com/V4qBzUA4kr
— Bill Ritter (@billritter7) July 7, 2020
Now it's been revealed that the damage was so bad that the plane's nose cone was flattened.
Goldman said the pilot told passengers he’d had to make an emergency landing after dealing with damage to the plane, but he couldn’t tell them in realtime partly due to the nature of the damage, which had knocked out autopilot and navigation.
Her fellow passengers suggested that the cause of the damage could have been a bird strike and not a hail storm.
“We got off and I didn’t realise the severity of the damage until I saw all of the passengers taking photos out the window of the plane,” Goldman added. “I was happy that we were all safe and I felt like the pilot and flight crew handled the situation really well without ensuing panic.”