Sheikh Samiullah, a frequent flier, thought nothing of it when he heard the pilot of his flight tell passengers to fasten their seatbelts and ask the cabin crew to be seated.
But within minutes, the plane encountered a severe hailstorm and suddenly plunged. Mr. Samiullah and other passengers aboard the Wednesday flight by an IndiGo passenger jet traveling from the Indian capital of New Delhi to Srinagar, in the Kashmir region, started screaming and shouting. Even the flight attendants were crying, he said.
“They were calling their gods, we were calling our gods,” Mr. Samiullah, 33, said of the passengers shouting prayers in Hindi and Arabic. “We thought it was our last flight; we thought we were going to die.”
The plane jolted upward and from side to side, and then plunged again, over a period of five to six minutes, Mr. Samiullah recounted. He was sure the plane would crash into the mountains below or be struck by the lightning visible from the windows.
A video that Mr. Samiullah, the chief executive of a logistics company, posted on social media showed terrified passengers exclaiming as the plane jolted.
“Nobody was expecting we would go for a safe landing,” he said.
But about 20 minutes after all the turmoil and fright, the plane landed safely. As passengers deplaned, they noticed a large chunk of the plane’s nose was missing, apparently damaged by the hail.
IndiGo said in a statement on Wednesday that the flight had encountered a “sudden hailstorm.” It added: “The flight and cabin crew followed established protocol, and the aircraft landed safely in Srinagar.”
Hail and turbulence — or unstable air movement caused by changes in wind speed and direction — are the greatest hazards to aircraft during thunderstorms, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Hail can freeze onto other pieces of hail, sometimes growing into a huge ice ball. Hailstones larger than half an inch in diameter can “significantly damage an aircraft in a few seconds,” the agency said. Hail can occur even in clear air several miles from a thunderstorm.
Passenger aircraft are not designed to absorb large hailstone impacts without damage, Airbus said in its Safety First magazine. Extreme hailstorms can lead to loss of visibility, unreliable air data or engine failure, and the best way to avoid them is to rely on weather radars.
Last year a 73-year-old British man died and dozens were injured when a Singapore Airlines plane hit intense turbulence 10 hours into a flight from London to Singapore. The plane rose unexpectedly by 362 feet, likely because of an updraft, and sped up unexpectedly. Pilots manually hit a brake in response, and the plane lost about 178 feet of altitude in less than five seconds.
Monika Cvorak contributed reporting.
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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