A flight attendant has broken her back while on a plane that she believed had crashed due to how hard a landing it made.
The Southwest Airlines flight attendant was working on board when she suffered a compression fracture in a vertebra of her upper back and was subsequently rushed to hospital.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has conducted an investigation into the incident and has released a report which is not yet available to the public.
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NTSB investigators are said to have looked into the landing of the 18-year-old Boeing 737-700, which touched down at John Wayne-Orange County Airport on July 1 after departing from Oakland, United States.
None of the other 141 people aboard the plane, which made a "hard landing", were reported as injured.
After the pilots had made the hard landing, one flight attendant who was in a jump seat at the back of the plane said she could feel a sharp pain in her back and neck and was then unable to move.
The report said: "She indicated that the plane hit the ground with such force that she thought the plane had crashed."
Members of the flight crew made the pilots aware of the injury shortly after they landed, with paramedics responding to the scene and transporting the unnamed attendant to a hospital.
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John Wayne Airport's runway is 5,700ft, which is reportedly much shorter than other airports.
Pilots landing on the shorter-than-usual runway told NTSB officials that they had aimed for the "touchdown zone".
Southwest said that customer and employee safety was their "top priority", with a spokesperson saying: "We reported the matter to the NTSB in accordance with regulatory requirements and conducted an internal review of the event."
The plane is said to have been evaluated for its "continuous airworthiness" on June 29, and is reportedly still making flights following the incident in July, Metro reported.
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