Death, injuries after ‘severe’ turbulence hits Singapore Airlines flight: How it can turn fatal

When travelling on a plane, air turbulence is all too common. You’d think there’s nothing dangerous about it. But in a rare incident, a passenger was killed and 30 others injured aboard a London-Singapore flight that encountered severe turbulence.

The Singapore Airlines plane reported plummeted for several minutes before it was diverted to Bangkok, where emergency crews rushed to help injured passengers amid stormy weather, reports The Associated Press (AP).

The Boeing 777-300ER, with 211 passengers and 18 crew members on board, landed in Bangkok at 3:45 pm, the airline said in a Facebook post.

Tracking data captured by FlightRadar24 and analysed by AP showed the Singapore Airlines flight cruising at 37,000 feet. The Boeing 777 suddenly and sharply pitched down to 31,000 feet in some three minutes, the data shows.

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The aircraft stayed at 31,000 feet for under 10 minutes before rapidly descending and landing in Bangkok in under half an hour. The descent happened as the flight was over the Andaman Sea approaching Myanmar, the AP report says.

While most flyers have encountered mild turbulence before, severe turbulence is rare. Some figures put the number of flights affected by severe turbulence as one departure in every 50,000, according to a report in The Independent.

Death and injuries are ever rarer. However, they are not unheard of. In March 2023, a flyer in the United States died after his private business jet “encountered severe turbulence”.

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The plane which had three passengers and two crew members on board saw “fatal injuries” to one passenger due to the turbulence.

In another incident in March last year, a Lufthansa flight from Texas to Germany that experienced “significant turbulence” was diverted to Virginia, with seven people on board hospitalised with “minor” injuries.

What is air turbulence, why does it happen and how dangerous can it be? Let’s understand.

Air turbulence and its causes

The Conversation describes air turbulence as when the air starts flowing in a “chaotic or random way”, resulting in some form of discomfort for the people aboard the flight.

This sudden change in air movement can happen for a number of factors, including thunderstorms, mountains and jet streams.

Thunderstorms can trigger “atmospheric waves” that move through the surrounding air before breaking and causing turbulence, The Conversation noted.

When air flows over a mountain range, a “mountain wave” is created – that disturbs the airflow. “These mountain waves can propagate as wide, gentle oscillations into the atmosphere, but they can also break up into many tumultuous currents, which we experience as turbulence,” explains National Geographic.

Jet streams or high-speed winds in the upper atmosphere can also lead to turbulence.

Types of turbulence

Turbulence, which lasts for a short period, has been categorised according to its level of intensity: light, moderate and severe.

Speaking to CNN in 2022, Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in the UK, said, “There’s light turbulence, which is a bit of strain against your seat belt, but food service can continue and you can probably walk around the cabin, maybe with some difficulty.

“Then there’s moderate turbulence, a definite strain against seat belts, anything that’s not secured will be dislodged, and walking is difficult; flight attendants are usually instructed to take their seats.

“The worst kind is severe turbulence: this is stronger than gravity, so it can pin you to your seat and if you’re not wearing your seat belt you’ll be tossed around inside the cabin. This is the kind of turbulence that causes serious Injuries – it’s been known to break bones, for example.”

British Airways captain Steve Allright told the UK newspaper The Telegraph in 2019 that severe turbulence is “extremely rare.”

“In a flying career of over 10,000 hours, I have experienced severe turbulence for about five minutes in total. It is extremely uncomfortable but not dangerous,” he had said then.

Clear-air turbulence is considered the most dangerous type as it occurs without a warning when the sky is clear with no clouds or signs of a storm.

As per a CNN report, around 65,000 aircraft experience moderate turbulence each year in the US, while about 5,500 suffer from severe turbulence.

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Dangers of air turbulence

Turbulence remains a top reason for anxiety among passengers travelling on planes.

Out of millions of flyers every year, hundreds of injuries among passengers and flight attendants on commercial aircraft are reported globally.

It is particularly dangerous for people not wearing seat belts.

As per a 2021 report by the US NTSB, turbulence was behind 37.6 per cent of all accidents on larger commercial airlines between 2009 and 2018.

However, it is rare for people to get injured during turbulence.

From 2009 to 2021, turbulence accounted for 146 serious injuries – 30 passengers and 116 crew members – in the US, as per the FAA data last year.

The FAA defines serious injuries as those that require hospitalisation for over 48 hours, or result in “fractured bones, severe muscle or tendon damage, harm to internal organs or second- or third-degree burns”, noted NPR.

“Most passengers seriously injured … are either out of their seats or seated with their seat belts unfastened,” the NTSB’s 2021 report said.

A 2009 CNN article said that there have been three turbulence-related deaths since 1980 on commercial airlines in the US. As per reports, at least two of these passengers who died were not wearing seat belts when the sign was on.

NTSB data says that 38 people aboard private planes have been killed in turbulence-related accidents since 2009, reported CNN.

In most cases, the flight crew is hurt during these turbulence-related accidents as they are generally up and moving inside the aircraft.

“The majority of injuries actually happen to flight attendants,” Les Dorr, the then spokesperson for the FAA, told CNN in 2009. “They have to be up performing their tasks, even when the seatbelt light is on.”

Sara Nelson, a United flight attendant and the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, told CNN, “We have flight attendants who have been thrown into the ceiling and then back down several times, resulting in broken limbs. In the aisle, with unannounced turbulence, we had people who lost toes, or lost the ability to work, or sustained injuries that kept them off the job for years".

Can turbulence incidents increase?

Unfortunately, yes.

Turbulence is one of the most common flight accidents today, as per NTSF.

For the US airlines alone, it is estimated that delays, damage and injuries due to turbulence cost $500 million a year, says the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Williams has warned that incidents and duration of air turbulence can increase in the coming decades owing to climate change.

“It is predicted there will be more and more incidents of severe clear-air turbulence, which typically comes out of the blue with no warning, occurring in the near future as climate change takes its effect in the stratosphere,” he told The Guardian in 2016.

“There has already been a steady rise in incidents of severe turbulence affecting flights over the past few decades. Globally, turbulence causes dozens of fatalities a year on small private planes and hundreds of injuries to passengers in big jets. And as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere keep rising, so will the numbers of incidents.”

So, what can flyers do? Fasten your seat belts which, aviation officials say, is the best way to avoid injury.

With inputs from agencies

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