A Spirit Airlines flight attendant was seriously injured after she was sent flying while assisting a passenger who was vomiting profusely when the Captain ‘aggressively’ pumped the brakes after being told that passengers were standing in the aisle.
The incident occurred on July 16, 2024, but the full details of exactly what occurred on Spirit flight 1101 from Charlotte to Orlando have only just come to light after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wrapped up an investigation.
According to the NTSB’s final report, the Airbus A320 had just landed at Orlando International Airport and was taxiing to the gate when the pilots were instructed to hold short of the ramp because another aircraft was occupying the alleyway to their assigned gate.
With the aircraft now at a standstill but not quite at its final parking spot, the pilots made multiple announcements reminding passengers to remain seated with their seatbelts securely fastened because the aircraft could move suddenly at any moment.
Unbeknown to the pilots, however, a line of passengers had formed to the lavatory at the back of the aircraft, while two flight attendants were helping a passenger who had suddenly started to vomit.
The pilots didn’t receive any notification from the flight attendants that the cabin was no longer ‘secure’, so when they received clearance to proceed to their assigned gate, they promptly started to taxi into the alleyway.
Not long after they started to taxi, the pilots received a call from the flight attendants to tell them that the cabin wasn’t actually secure, as they had believed.
In an attempt to keep the passengers and flight attendants safe, the Captain decided to bring the plane to a halt but inadvertently pumped on the brakes too hard, bringing the aircraft to an ‘abrupt’ stop.
In fact, the braking was so ‘aggressive’ that one flight attendant hurt her wrist when the plane came to a stop, while a second flight attendant hit her head and sustained a serious injury when she was thrown to the floor.
The NTSB concluded that the cause was the accident was “the captain’s inadvertent aggressive application of the brakes during taxi which resulted in a sudden stop.”
“Contributing to the accident was the flight attendants’ failure to notify the flight crew of the unsecure cabin.”
