MONTREAL, Canada — An Air Canada flight was diverted on Thursday to Hawaii after severe turbulence left several passengers with minor injuries, the carrier said in a statement.

Flight AC33, carrying 269 passengers and 15 crew, was flying from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia, when the Boeing 777 aircraft "encountered unforecasted and sudden turbulence approximately two hours past Hawaii," the carrier said on Thursday. The plane was diverted to Honolulu and landed at 12:45 p.m. EST.

Thirty-seven passengers were admitted to local hospitals and discharged after assessment, Air Canada spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur said in an email on Friday.

Nine of those passengers required observation for injuries including bumps and small lacerations, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The carrier's initial reports were of 25 people with minor injuries.

"(The plane) must've dropped about 100 feet or something because we all went up to the ceiling like throughout the plane," one report quoted a passenger as saying.

"The seat in front of me, the girl hit the plastic overhead and actually snapped and broke it, and the oxygen masks came down, and a lot of panic," the passenger, Michael Bailey, told Hawaii News Now.

Air Canada said it plans to resume the flight to Sydney on Friday.

A case of severe turbulence in June on a flight from Kosovo to France was captured on video, showing a flight attendant hitting the ceiling and another praying.

In another case, 29 people were injured after a Turkish Airlines flight encountered severe turbulence on its approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in March. — Reuters