A Virgin Australia passenger plane has been spun around and blown down the runway of the Moranbah Airport in Queensland’s Central Highlands during a severe storm.

The large cell hit Moranbah on Monday afternoon, with a wind gust of 156 kilometres an hour recorded just after 5:00pm (AEST).

The same weather system also dumped hail up to five centimetres in diameter at Dysart.

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Virgin Australia said the 70-seat plane, which was half full at the time, corrected itself after being tipped, spun around and the peppered with large hail.

“An ATR 72 aircraft became destabilised while stationary at Moranbah Airport as a result of an unusually strong wind squall,” a statement from the company said.

“The aircraft corrected itself and no passengers or crew were injured in the incident.

“The safety and wellbeing of our guests and team members is always our highest priority and engineers will inspect the aircraft before it resumes operations.”

Glenn Badke, who was a passenger on the plane, said the incident lasted for some time.

“Probably a good 20 minutes I’d say, and then we had to wait the storm out – it was still raining quite heavy,” he said.

“We had no power – the power to the plane was out – so we had to sit in the plane and wait for the storm to go.”

A spokesman for Virgin said another plane would be sent to Moranbah on Tuesday to retrieve the passengers.

It is understood another two light aircraft at the terminal were also overturned.

Weather bureau forecaster Brian James said conditions had been ideal for the severe weather.

“A coastal trough that moved inland a little bit – an east-west trough – and there was also another trough that was inland running north-south, so when you get the two troughs combining often you get good potential for severe storms and that certainly was the case yesterday,” he said.