A former Obama official died after a plane 'suddenly convulsed' due to turbulence, launching and injuring passengers on board

• A former Obama admin official and her family hit turbulence on a flight to Maryland last Friday.
• The turbulence launched the passengers, and former official Dana Hyde later died of her injuries.

A former official who served in both the Barack Obama and Bill Clinton administrations died after suffering injuries from a violently turbulent flight last Friday.

Dana Hyde, a former senior US State Department advisor under Obama and an attorney on the 9/11 commission, was flying back from New England, where she had been visiting schools with her son and husband, Jonathan Chambers, according to the Associated Press.

The company jet they were aboard hit severe turbulence, hurling the passengers on board, and leaving Hyde with blunt-force trauma, according to the chief medical examiner's office. The pilot was forced to divert its landing to Connecticut, where Hyde was pronounced dead at a Hartford hospital, per the AP.

According to the Washington Post, Chambers sent an email to his colleagues at broadband company Connexon after the crash, saying that "the plane suddenly convulsed in a manner that violently threw the three of us," leaving Hyde "badly injured."

The NTSB has launched an investigation into the incident, noting that there was a reported "trim issue," referring to the plane's ability to stay stable and level during the flight, and that equipment from the plane like the cockpit voice recorder would be analyzed.

"She loved and was beloved," Chambers wrote to his colleagues, according to the Post. "Dana was the best person I ever knew. She was a wonderful mother to our boys and she was accomplished professionally."

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, between 2009 and 2021, 30 passengers and 116 crew members were seriously injured due to turbulence on flights.