Pilot of LATAM flight reportedly tells passenger the plane’s gauges ‘blanked out’, as injured recover in hospital

The pilot of the LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 that dropped abruptly mid-flight from Sydney to Auckland has reportedly told a passenger that his gauges “blanked out” and he “lost all ability to fly the plane”.

At least 50 people were hurt when the aircraft, which was carrying 263 passengers, experienced a strong shake mid-air on Monday afternoon.

Ten passengers and three cabin crew members were taken to a hospital. One person is in serious condition while the rest suffered mild-to-moderate injuries, according to a spokesperson for Hato Hone St John, which treated the passengers when the plane landed at Auckland Airport.

Brian Jokat, a passenger on the flight, said the plane “just dropped unannounced”.

“I mean it dropped unlike anything I’ve ever experienced on any kind of minor turbulence, and people were thrown out of their seats, hit the top of the roof of the plane, throwing down the aisles,” he told the BBC.

In another interview with New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Mr Jokat said a passenger who was not wearing his seatbelt flew up into the ceiling.

“I opened my eyes and he was on the roof of the plane on his back, looking down on me. It was like The Exorcist.”

He said after the plane landed, the pilot came to the back of the aircraft — at which point he asked he asked the pilot what had happened.

“He said to me, ‘I lost my instrumentation briefly and then it just came back all of a sudden. My gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane’.”

“Some of the roof panels were broken from people being thrown up and knocking through the plastic roof panels in the aisle ways. And there was blood coming from several people’s heads.

Mr Jokat, who was not injured, said doctors who happened to be on the plane treated people who were severely injured.

While the cause of the apparent sudden change in trajectory of LATAM 800 has not been officially ascertained, safety experts say most aeroplane accidents are caused by a cocktail of factors that need to be thoroughly investigated.

Boeing said it was working to gather more information and will provide any support to the airline.

Boeing shares closed down about 3.0 per cent, after the latest incident involving one of its aircraft. The US Federal Aviation Administration in January barred the troubled planemaker from expanding production of its best-selling 737 MAX narrowbody planes, following “unacceptable” quality issues.

The head of the FAA, Mike Whitaker, said the agency will work with Australian authorities or the New Zealand authorities to investigate.

“We will certainly follow that closely” given the airplane was manufactured in the US, he said.

The US National Safety Board said it did not yet have anything official on the incident.

The eight-year-old Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, was on its way to Santiago via Auckland. LATAM Airlines said a new flight to Chile will depart from Auckland on Tuesday.

In 2008, dozens of people were injured when another wide-body jet, an Airbus 330 operated by Qantas Airways, dropped sharply because of faulty readings from a flight data computer while heading for Perth.