A TikToker's footage of the chaos inside a Lufthansa flight that injured 7 people went viral, but she said people still don't get how scary it was

• Monica Raygada was a passenger on the Lufthansa flight that flew into heavy turbulence.
• She filmed the flight as it dropped, posting the footage on TikTok, where it went viral.

A TikToker who filmed the aftermath of heavy turbulence on a Lufthansa flight said viewers did not understand how scary it actually was.

On March 1, Monica Raygada was flying from her home in Austin, Texas, to Frankfurt, Germany, while on her way to her final destination in Prague, Czech Republic, where she would be visiting her brother, she told Insider.

As she was eating her in-flight meal, about an hour and a half into the journey, she said she felt a sudden drop, and watched as the remainder of her meal shot up into the air.

"Everything just went flying everywhere, and it's crazy because it felt like it was kind of in slow motion," she told Insider.

Raygada, 28, was one of the passengers on the plane that flew into heavy turbulence, injuring at least seven people, according to a statement from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to Insider. A Lufthansa spokesperson told Insider at the time that the incident was caused by "so-called clear air turbulence, which can occur without visible weather phenomena or advance warning."

One passenger onboard the flight told The Washington Post that the flying food even damaged the ceiling and that one person was bleeding and had to be taken off the plane in a wheelchair.

Raygada described the atmosphere among passengers after the turbulence began.

"After we started falling, it was just completely silent. I think that's when we all thought, you know, this is it," she said, adding, "It's the first time in my life that I actually thought that I was gonna die. It was complete panic. I didn't even scream, I felt paralyzed."

Using the plane's WiFi, which she had connected to at the start of the flight, Raygada took out her phone to message her family, thinking that it might have been her last chance to speak to them, she said.

She filmed her surroundings, to show her family the debris that was around her.

"I wanted them to be able to grasp what was going on, that this wasn't just ordinary turbulence. It was a big deal," she said.

According to Raygada, about 30 minutes after she felt the initial drop, the pilot announced that the plane would be performing an emergency landing in Washington D.C.

Raygada told Insider she was "thankful" to be back on land, and checked into her hotel hoping to calm down from the anxiety she felt during the incident. A few days later, she decided to post her footage from the flight on her TikTok account, so that her friends who followed her on the app could see what happened to her.

But to her surprise, the video went viral, receiving 12 million views.

Viewers were shocked by the footage, but some questioned how intense the situation was

"Come with me while I almost died on the Lufthansa Austin to Frankfurt flight," an on-screen caption on Raygada's video read.

Plenty of commenters said they were shocked by the footage, and would not have known how to react in that situation. Some also said it made them feel afraid of flying in the future.

But other commenters suggested that Raygada should not have been fearful for her life, because of the widely reported fact that turbulence has never caused a flight to crash before.

Raygada told Insider that she was trying to articulate how she felt during the situation by posting her video, but that some viewers who saw it still didn't understand the gravity of how scary it was for her, taking her caption too literally.

"I think some people were making fun of the fact that I said I was going to die, but I mean, I'm not saying that it's a fact, I'm saying that's what I thought," she said, adding, "I was genuinely in shock, thinking, 'I'm falling with this airplane, these are my last minutes.'"

Despite believing that some viewers misunderstood her video, Raygada said she has no plans to go back to TikTok to post an explanation or storytime video — a popular format where users speak to the camera about an experience — as many other creators have done after going viral. She instead said she hopes to get back to her normal life and overcome anxiety about flying in the future by continuing to travel.

"I'm hoping that, with time, I'll be able to relax on a flight again," she said.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.