Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A Continental Airlines Inc. jetliner made an emergency landing in Miami after turbulence injured at least 26 people flying to Houston from Rio de Janeiro.

Fourteen passengers were taken to the hospital, four with serious injuries, and 12 more were treated at the scene, said Lieutenant Elkin Sierra, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department. No injuries appeared to be life-threatening and most travelers who sought treatment were “just bumped and bruised,” he said.

The Boeing Co. 767-200 was about an hour from Miami when the injuries forced the pilots to divert at 5:35 a.m. local time, said Dave Messing, a spokesman for Houston-based Continental. Flight 128 had 168 passengers and 11 crew members.

“People were jolted up and down and sideways,” said Sierra, adding that some passengers hadn’t buckled their seat belts. “They hit the sides of the airplane, and each other.”

Several people had to be placed on stretchers and have their necks or backs stabilized, which is standard procedure with such injuries, Sierra said.

The incident occurred in clear-air turbulence at about 36,000 feet (10,973 meters), said Les Dorr, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. There was no structural damage to the plane or injury to the crew, he said. The plane was near the east end of the Dominican Republic, and about 900 miles from Miami, Messing said.

Seatbelt Sign

“The turbulence was unanticipated,” Messing said. The seat belt sign was on at the time, and the crew didn’t report trouble before, he said.

The flight left Rio de Janeiro at 9:45 p.m. yesterday and was scheduled to arrive at Houston at 6 a.m. Passengers able to travel were put on later flights to their original destinations, Messing said.

Continental, the fourth-largest U.S. airline, expects to learn more after interviewing the crew, which was returning to Houston, he said. The carrier originally reported 37 injuries among passengers, and later revised the count.

Turbulence accounted for 22 percent of all U.S. airline accidents from 1996 to 2005 and was responsible for 49 percent of the serious-injury accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report in March.

In June, an Air France Airbus SAS 330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after flying through severe thunderstorms with updrafts of 100 miles per hour, according to AccuWeather.com. All 228 people on board were killed. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

One passenger was killed in December 1997 when a United Airlines Boeing 747 encountered a “wave action” of turbulence that caused the jetliner to rise and descend about 50 feet after it had departed from Tokyo en route to Honolulu. Fifteen passengers and three flight attendants received serious injuries, according to an NTSB report.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mary Jane Credeur in Atlanta at mcredeur@bloomberg.net; Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas at maryc.s@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 3, 2009 16:23 EDT