More details about the Air Canada flight

James Stevenson And Bill Graveland, THE CANADIAN PRESS
 
CALGARY - Nisha Gill believed she was looking at her two-year-old daughter for the last time during 15 seconds of terror Thursday morning as Air Canada Flight 190 plunged through the skies.
 
"I was scared because my daughter was with me. My husband was telling me not to go. She wasn't supposed to go with me," said Gill, tears streaming down her face. "We were just praying it should land properly."
 
Gill, 30, was on her way to visit a sister in Toronto and had only booked her daughter's ticket the night before.
 
The two were among 88 people on a Victoria-Toronto flight that began normally but was suddenly transformed into a terrifying white-knuckle roller-coaster ride. Shaken passengers spoke of how the jet plunged thousands of metres and then rolled sharply to the left and right - violently pitching people, dishes and drink carts about the cabin.
 
"I can't describe the screaming. No movie does it justice. There was a lot of screaming - a lot of crying," recalled Jayne Harvey, 45, a nurse from Keswick, Ont.
 
Ambulances encircled the plane after it made an emergency landing at Calgary International Airport shortly after 8 a.m. and paramedics whisked a number of people off the aircraft on stretchers. Ten, including two crew members, were treated at city hospitals for a range of relatively minor injuries.
 
Nine were out of hospital by Thursday afternoon, and the 10th person was released Thursday night.
 
"The people who weren't belted in were the ones that got injured the most and those who had other people flying into them," said Harvey, who helped tend to the injured.
 
"I thought it was over for me. I will admit I was saying my prayers because I really thought I was about to die. I said, 'Just take care of my family."'
 
Some passengers had gripped their armrests so tightly they were bent 60 degrees.
 
What caused the aircraft to plunge so suddenly was unknown. Canada's Transportation Safety Board was investigating but said it was too soon to determine whether the "control problems" were caused by turbulence, mechanical problems or a mistake by the flight crew.
 
Harvey said it was a "miracle" that the pilots were able to regain control of the Airbus 319.
 
"They came on the intercom and explained they were flying manually and that the computer had been knocked out. And I don't know if it was knocked out before, and that caused the lurch, or it was knocked out after, because of the plane lurching back and forth."     more.....