There were ‘people flying’: Passengers recall mid-air drop of LATAM Airlines flight

A group of passengers on board a LATAM Airlines flight that experienced a mid-air drop while traveling to New Zealand arrived in Chile on Tuesday, with two of them speaking to a CNN team at Santiago International Airport.

A group of passengers on board a LATAM Airlines flight that experienced a mid-air drop while traveling to New Zealand arrived in Chile on Tuesday, with two of them speaking to a CNN team at Santiago International Airport. “The experience was horrible,” said Chilean resident Verónica Martínez, who was on flight LAN800 from Australia to New Zealand on Monday. She said that everything was normal until the plane “kind of shut down – went down. [There were] people flying – things flying.” Martínez said she was not injured because she was wearing a seat belt, but she saw some people, including a baby, flying through the cabin. She described that moment as being on a “roller coaster.” Dozens of people were injured after LATAM Airlines flight 800 from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand experienced a “technical event” on Monday that produced a sudden movement, the flight operator reported. Another passenger, Diego Valenzuela, who also spoke to the media upon leaving the airport on Tuesday, said that “for 3, 4 seconds, [it was] a free fall, and afterward, many were injured.”