Singapore Airlines flight horror: The aircraft was subjected to turbulent areas and quickly lost about 1,800 meters in altitude. A 73-year-old British man died.
Terrifying Turbulence Incident
It was reported that on Tuesday a Singapore Airlines flight encountered very bad turbulence over the Indian Ocean which made the aircraft to drop 1,800 meters in three minutes, the airline added. A Briton, aged 73 years was found dead while the Boeing 777 started shaking violently, as reported by Hindustan Times.
What is in-flight turbulence?
Turbulence is known as the irregular movement of the air and is generally regarded as unsafe for flying. Although most are generated by storms, some are particularly hazardous, including clear air turbulence that doesn’t provide visual clues.
Mainly caused by wind shear, the clear-air turbulence generally occurs close to the altitude of jet streams, where two large bodies of air with different speeds exist. If the relative velocity is large, then the atmosphere forms vortexes – vortices, similar to the vortices in water. Thomas Guinn, chair of the applied aviation sciences department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said that irregular air currents are observed due to wind shear near the jet stream.
How common are turbulence-related injuries?
Turbulence was disclosed as the cause of over one third of all airline incidents reported between 2009 and 2018 in the United States; it often led to severe passengers’ injury but did not harm the aircraft itself, as noted by the NTSB.
Severe turbulence incidents that resulted in at least 163 serious injuries and a hospital stay of at least two days were reported between 2009 and 2022. Majority of such injuries affected flight attendants, who are at higher risk since they spend much of their time off their seats, especially during flight, as reported by Hindustan Times.
“It’s not uncommon to have turbulence encounters that cause minor injuries up to a broken bone,” said Larry Cornman, a project scientist at the National Science Foundation’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research. “But fatalities are rare — especially for large transport aircraft.”
Most turbulence Occuring Routes.
1. Santiago – Santa Cruz
2. Almaty – Bishkek
3. Lanzhou – Chengdu
4. Centrair – Sendai
5. Milan – Geneva
7. Osaka – Sendai
8. Xianyang – Chengdu
9. Xianyang – Chongqing
10. Milan – Zurich