The Transportation Safety Board and Air Canada are investigating after passengers were injured when a plane suddenly rolled side-to-side and dropped mid-flight on Thursday.

A paramedic gets ready to transport an injured passenger to hospital at Calgary International Airport on Thursday.
(Larry MacDougal/Canadian Press)

Air Canada Flight 190 from Victoria made an emergency landing in Calgary at 8:30 a.m. MT after the plane jolted suddenly. Two crew members and eight passengers were admitted to hospital, most with soft tissue injuries, and released later that night.

The flight pivoted several times and dropped before levelling off to go to Calgary, passengers said.

"It was very scary. I thought we were going to go down," passenger Anne Norris told CBC News. "We were all reading our books or getting our coffee and then all of a sudden the plane just tipped madly. I think it went to my left first, and then back the other way.

"Everything started flying. The coffee cart went up and down, people were banged around," she said, adding the seatbelt sign had just gone off.

"All of a sudden there were three big drops," said passenger Andrew Evans. "I was in the very, very front seat of the plane and was watching dishes fly through the air. There was a crash. The cart tipped over and there was a lot of squealing."

"The plane started pivoting from side to side, " said Richard Kool, a professor who was taking the flight on his way to a faculty meeting in Ottawa. "People who weren't wearing seatbelts, laptop computers, books were flying."

"People who weren't wearing seatbelts, laptop computers, books were flying," recalled Richard Kool.
(CBC)

Norris said everyone was screaming and many people aboard were crying. One child vomited from the shock, and another person had a nose bleed from being banged around. She said a man in the washroom was also injured.

She was wearing her seatbelt but still "was thrown against the side of the plane, the armrest … many times." She said she hit her head on the window and bruised the left side of her body.

Airline officials said the rocky ride lasted about 15 seconds.

Norris, who was travelling alone, said, "You feel as if this is the end. And I thought, 'OK, I'm glad my children are grown. They're OK and I'm fine'."

Many of the passengers praised the crew for their handling of the situation.

Crews praised for conduct during flight

"The staff was fantastic, they really were," Norris said, adding that just after the plane stopped pitching, the crew started bringing ice packs around. "The crew were wonderful and the captain tried to keep everybody informed."

Anne Norris, who was on the flight, said many people were screaming and crying.
(CBC)

Kathryn Bowler, a passenger who was taken to hospital for a shoulder injury, said she commends the crew for "their immediate care of everyone, despite being the ones who may have been thrown the hardest.

"The cockpit crew took a lurching aircraft quickly out of a terrifying ride into a manually controlled, outstanding landing, to the applause and cheers of us all," she said in an e-mail to CBC News.

Bowler, who found two unmatched shoes on her lap after the bumps, said Air Canada representatives were quickly with her at the hospital, "and took care of everything for me, including allowing me the choice of when I fly home."

The investigation, which is a standard procedure, will look into whether the Airbus A319's drop was caused by a rogue pocket of turbulence, a mechanical or software glitch or human error. 

Pilot blamed computer failure, passengers say

Several passengers, including Norris and Kool, said the pilot blamed the incident on computer failure and flew the plane manually to Calgary.

CBC meteorologist, and licensed commercial pilot, Nick Czernkovich said turbulence might have caused the autopilot to disconnect, forcing pilots to operate the aircraft manually.

Nav Canada's website indicates there were no aviation weather bulletins in effect at the time of the flight. Environment Canada reported what a meteorologist called typical conditions in B.C. on Thursday morning.