Attendant From Turbulent Lufthansa Flight Asks Passengers To Delete Photos, Videos

A flight attendant on a turbulent Lufthansa flight allegedly asked passengers to delete photos and videos of the incident, which left seven people on board injured.

In an interview with Insider, Rolanda Schmidt, one of the seven people injured on the March 1 flight, said that a crew member instructed passengers via loudspeaker to "delete all your pictures and videos" as they were descending to Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport to make an emergency landing.

"I think we were all just like, 'What?!'" Schmidt told Insider.

Schmidt said that the same flight attendant made another announcement five minutes later with the same instructions. The crew member reportedly implied that the instructions were given to protect other passengers' privacy.

"That's not the way that it came across, saying 'delete all of your pictures' and all of that," Schmidt told the outlet, adding that she and other passengers only took photos and videos of the aftermath of the incident, which resulted in food, papers and debris littering the cabin floor.

A second passenger on board the flight confirmed to Insider that flight crew members asked passengers to delete all their photos. The outlet, however, did not name the person.

Lufthansa Flight 469, which took off from Austin, Texas, and was headed to Frankfurt, Germany, on March 1, experienced "significant turbulence" 37,000 feet over Tennessee, the Federal Aviation Administration told CNN earlier.

The plane took a major drop, sending food and personal items flying throughout the cabin.

The incident happened about 90 minutes after takeoff, according to a Lufthansa spokesperson.

"This was so-called clear air turbulence, which can occur without visible weather phenomena or advance warning," Lufthansa wrote, as per CNN. "The affected passengers were given initial care on board by the flight attendants trained for such cases. As the safety and well-being of passengers and crew members is the top priority at all times, the cockpit crew decided to make an alternate landing to (Dulles airport) after flying through the turbulence."

While Lufthansa said the seven injured passengers were taken to hospitals with only "minor injuries," Schmidt told Insider that she suffered a concussion, bruised her arm and potentially fractured her hip after flying out of her seat and hitting her head twice.

Monica Raygada, another passenger on the flight, took to TikTok to share her experience of the incident.

"Come with me while I almost died on the Lufthansa Austin to Frankfurt flight," Raygada captioned her video.

Raygada's video showed the mess inside the cabin after the turbulence threw almost everything off place.

"We were all having dinner 1.5 hours into the flight and then we suddenly dropped," she wrote. "It felt like we were in zero gravity for some time because I saw everything flying in slow motion."

Camila McConaughey, who was on the flight with her husband, actor Matthew McConaughey, also shared a video of the aftermath of the chaos.

"The @lufthansa flight you are seeing on the news today!!!! Yes...that one. Thank God everyone was safe and ok," she wrote.

Meanwhile, a Twitter user named Stryker Fadhel said that his wife was on the flight and sent photos of the situation.

Lufthansa has yet to issue a statement on the allegations that its crew told passengers to delete photos and videos of the flight.