As extreme turbulence sent an Air Europa flight tumbling on Monday, causing bits of plane debris to fly into Dr. Cecilia Laguzzi’s head, she woke from her in-flight nap and immediately started scrambling to find her children.
Her daughter was sleeping with her husband several seats away, but her two-year-old son—briefly lost in the chaos of the turbulence—was crying from a spot in the ceiling where he had been flung after bits of the plane’s overhead had been knocked loose.
“I was trying to find him on the floor and started screaming his name until someone told me, ‘Are you looking for a baby?’’’ she said, adding that the person then pointed up to the roof of the plane where her son was lodged.
“I’ll never forget how I felt in that moment,” Laguzzi, from Uruguay, told Good Morning America. “He was crying, he was very scared, and we were all very scared as well, but the moment I took him in my arms, he calmed down.”
Footage circulating on social media showed that an adult was also propelled into the overhead compartment and had to be helped down by fellow passengers.
The chaotic flight was traveling from Madrid to Uruguay before it had to make an emergency landing to treat the 40 passengers who were injured during the turbulence. Seven were hospitalized in critical condition.
Laguzzi said her son was slightly bruised but fine, and she quickly stepped up to help treat other passengers until first responders arrived at the airport.
Laguzzi said the experience was “traumatizing,” and she doesn’t plan on flying again anytime soon.
Air Europa started flying the passengers to their final destination in Uruguay on Tuesday, and says the incident remains under investigation.
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