 Flight from Moscow hit pocket of ‘clear air’, throwing passengers into the ceiling and leaving some with broken bones 
 
 Severe turbulence has injured 27 people on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Bangkok, with passengers thrown into the aircraft’s ceiling, leaving some with broken bones. The Boeing 777 hit a pocket of “clear air” turbulence – where there is no telltale cloud pattern or radar presence to warn pilots of the change in air pressure – as the flight prepared to land in Bangkok, shortly after midnight on Monday. Denis Antonyuk, an official at Russia’s embassy in Bangkok said 24 Russian nationals and three Thai citizens were injured on flight SU270. Aeroflot said none of the passengers were in a serious condition, and although several had broken bones, none had suffered spinal compression fractures, as had been reported earlier on Monday. The turbulence hit about 40 minutes before the aircraft was due to land, and was “impossible to foresee”, with the crew unable to warn passengers to return to their seats and buckle their seatbelts, Aeroflot said. The airline said the pilot's experience amounted to more than 23,000 flight hours and that about 750 cases of clear-air turbulence are recorded in civil aviation every year. The Russian embassy in Bangkok told Reuters: “The reason behind the injuries was that some of the passengers had not had their seatbelts fastened.” 
 
 
 
 Images taken by a passenger and posted on Instagram showed the aircraft’s cabin in disarray, with passengers lying in the aisles and items scattered on the floor in the galleys. Photograph: Reuters 
 
 “We were hurled up into the roof of the plane, it was practically impossible to hold on,” a passenger, who gave her first name Yevgenia, told Rossiya 24 by phone. “It felt like the shaking wouldn’t stop, that we would just crash.” 
 
 During the Soviet era, Aeroflot had an appalling safety record, with 27 accidents killing 780 people in 1973 alone.
– Some passengers were hurled to the ceiling Monday when an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Bangkok hit a patch of turbulence so severe that dozens of passengers were injured. The Boeing 777 hit what's known as "clear air turbulence" around 40 minutes before landing in Bangkok, where 27 passengers were hospitalized, some with broken bones, the Guardian reports. The airline is paying for their treatment, though it says the injuries were definitely not its fault. "The reasons behind the injures were that some of the passengers had not had their seatbelts fastened," Aeroflot said in a statement. Passenger Rostik Rusev tells CNN that it lasted for 10 terrifying seconds. "There was blood on the ceiling, people with broken noses, babies who were hurt. It was horrible. It came out of nowhere. It was like driving a car and a tire suddenly bursts," Rusev says, adding: "The aircraft personnel couldn't have been more professional and courageous. They were heroes in everything they were doing." There are hundreds of cases every year—usually milder ones—of aircraft encountering clear air turbulence, which is caused when masses of air moving at different speeds meet, the BBC reports. Pilots rely on each other to report turbulence pockets they encounter in skies that appear clear and calm.