Why terrifying turbulence left 1 dead & 30 injured on Singapore plane which plunged 7000ft – expert

Why terrifying turbulence left 1 dead & 30 injured on Singapore plane which plunged 7000ft – expert

this incident is highly significant because somebody actually got killed by the uh the movement of the aircraft during the turbulence episode I think about 30 people appear to have been injured some of them quite badly as well so I mean we’re talking about very severe incident here the other thing which which um appears uh to be true is that um a lot of people including I think the cabin crew were not wearing their seat belts now the indication there is that the crew didn’t know this turbulence was coming or they were not they weren’t expecting expecting it to be anything like it actually turned out to be um so everybody on the aircraft was relatively unprepared and and that’s dangerous if you have your seat belt Loosely fastened at all times this kind of disaster will not happen to you it would be very uncomfortable but at least you won’t get thrown at the ceiling [Music] [Music] turbulence of this severity is very rare um you only hear uh once every five years or so of somebody being either severely hurt or killed fatalities are almost unheard of but I think about 5 years ago I recall one unexpected turbulence has always been able to hit Crews before they fly Cruise have a meteorological briefing so they know the kind of weather they’re going to encounter on Route they also have devices on board to warn them where turbulence might be so that they can avoid it for example even at nighttime they can see um vigorous cumul cumulon nimbus clouds which contain a lot of turbulence in their cores they can see it on weather radar and when they do see it they never fly through a cloud that they know is there they always fly around them however especially in the tropics and this is where this um incident happened you very often get lines of cumul nimbus clouds and you have to fly between them and they might be quite close to you and in the vicinity of a very vigorous storm cloud there will be turbulence I don’t suppose that that is a reasonable explanation for this one because if they were going to do that I think the crew would have put the seat belt signs on and and people would not have been hurt the turbulence could have been terrible but if you’re strapped in and and all the catering trolleys on board and the crew themselves are strapped in then you’re not going to come to any harm I’ve flown for many years as an RAF pilot um on transport airplanes Hercules I’ve experienced turbulence but I haven’t ever experienced a meteorologically caused drop of 6,000 ft it sounds terrifying frankly um very severe turbulence is pretty terrifying even if you if you’re thrown down a few feet and then up a few feet if if it it it’s the violence rather than the extent of the climb or descent that you have encountered now what we’re talking about turbulence is caused by vertical movements in the air I mean we know all about horizontal movements of air we call it wind and we think nothing of it and yet we know that wind if there hurricanes um can be extremely powerful and extremely damaging now especially especially in tropical regions if vertical air currents known by glider Pilots as thermals and they can happen even in the UK um those air currents um uh if you’ve got an updraft caused by relatively warm air then next to it there’s going to be a downdraft now if you hit a downdraft and then you hit an updraft you get a big bump and that is the nature of turbulence all this talk about things called air pockets it’s rubbish there’s no such thing as a you know a nature ofor of vacuum you you just do not have little areas of Sky which doesn’t even have any air in it no we’re talking about we’re talking about a a a an Airborne analogy of waves on the sea we know that when when a strong wind passes over the sea it can start out being calm and it can whip up into uh into extremely big waves which Sho ships are tossed around on the the uh turbulence that we encounter in the air is the Airborne equivalent of big waves on the sea Pilots know that that uh you know clear air turbulence which cannot be predicted or is not predicted um can occur um one of the things that is uh what I just mentioned which was if you have a line of tropical cumulo nimbus clouds um and you avoid the the severe uh updrafts in them by not flying through the clouds if you fly between between them there are going to be downdrafts in the spaces between and and those are not visible you mind you if you’re flying through a line of qims you know you’re going to get some turbulence if you fly close to them even if not within them but there is another area uh there is another meteorological phenomenon that can cause severe turbulence and and completely unseen and that is a clear air turbulence caused by proximity to what’s known as a jet stream now a jet stream um is a high-speed River of wind traveling a couple of hundred miles an hour or at least 100 200 miles an hour through relatively um stable air uh at at a high level the pilots will know that there is a risk of that kind of turbulence and will’ll try to avoid it through the weather briefing that they have uh before they take off and of course nowadays with today’s um electronic communications uh and satellite Communications they can get updates for the position of the jet stream what happens um uh to create this clear air turbulence because that it doesn’t generate any cloud is that there is there the air is tumbling in the v in the uh in the um boundary layer between the very fast air and the Very uh still air that it’s passing through there’s literally a tumbling effect it’s like if you see a a fast flowing river um River Rapids and the the water tumbles over rocks and stones you know the air does that if it’s brushing against anything also when you if you’re on approach Final Approach in in very very windy weather and you’re looking forward to a nice smooth Landing but you’re bumping around an awful lot on the approach um that’s caused by wind passing over buildings trees hills and mountains um the air is just tumbling so there’s no mystery about this uh any more than you would find it mysterious uh if you were in a ship and the ship was being tossed around on waves that you could see

A Brit granddad died after severe turbulence battered a flight from London as passengers were tucking into breakfast.

Geoff Kitchen, 73, died of a heart attack after the Singapore Airlines Boeing flight plunged 7,000ft in just six minutes sparking mid-air panic.

Flight SQ321 took off from London Heathrow shortly after 10pm on Monday with 211 passengers and 18 crew on board – including 47 Brits.

Nearly 11 hours into the 13-hour journey to Singapore, the packed jet was smashed by sudden “severe turbulence” while passengers were eating breakfast, officials said.

Geoff, from Thornbury, Gloucestershire, had just begun a six week trip to Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Australia, with wife Linda when tragedy struck.

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