by One passenger died and 30 others were injured aboard a Singapore Airlines flight hit by “severe turbulence,” officials said Tuesday, but experts say such deaths are rare even as researchers point out the possibility climate change to cause more serious situations of turbulence.
Since 2009, the National Transportation Safety Board said, there have been no turbulence-related deaths aboard large US commercial aircraft, such as the Boeing aircraft that encountered sudden turbulence over the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar at 37,000 feet.
A 73-year-old passenger with several medical problems died, possibly due to cardiac arrest, and at least seven others were critically injured, Kittipong Kittikachorn, general manager of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, said at a news conference on Tuesday .
The cause of the disturbance is under investigation. Singapore Airlines said the Singapore-bound flight from London experienced significant turbulence about 10 hours after departure.
Deaths from turbulence are rare, but encounters are not uncommon, according to Larry Cornman, a physicist and project scientist with the US Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“A lot of times, for something like this, it’s just wrong place, wrong time,” said Cornman, who studies small-scale movements of the atmosphere that can endanger aircraft.
Out of millions upon millions of flights, turbulence caused 185 serious injuries from 2009 to 2023, the most recent year with publicly available data, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The agency, which requires airlines to report injuries and deaths, categorizes a serious injury as any injury that requires more than two days in the hospital; involves any internal organ; or resulting in bone fractures, second or third degree burns, severe hemorrhages, or nerve, muscle or tendon damage.
Of the incidents reported from 2009 to 2022, at least 129 crew members and 34 passengers were injured.
Turbulence-related deaths can be caused by heart attacks or head injuries if a passenger’s head hits the ceiling or is hit by falling luggage, Cornman said.
“Anything that could die on the ground can certainly do it inside an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet,” he said, adding that seatbelt passengers should still feel safe in the skies.
“These large transport aircraft are built quite strong. They will not fall apart or come out of the sky due to turbulence,” Cornman said.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said initial reports appeared to indicate that the Singapore flight was experiencing clear air turbulence – the most dangerous type because it cannot be seen and is almost undetectable with technology current.
“One second, you’re cruising along,” Nelson said. “Next, passengers, crew and unsecured carts or other items are being thrown around the cabin.”
Nelson and a group of researchers say that such episodes of air turbulence – which are difficult to predict and avoid because they are not associated with storms – are increasing due to climate change.
A study published in 2023 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that extreme air turbulence over the North Atlantic Ocean increased by more than 50% from 1979 to 2020.
According to the researchers, the increase in turbulence is likely due to the effect of climate change on wind speeds in the upper levels of the atmosphere. Some of the most significant increases in air turbulence have been evident in recent years over mid-latitude regions, including over the North Atlantic and flight paths over the United States, according to the study.
The findings suggest that global warming may be driving instability in the jet stream, a conveyor belt of fast-moving air that circles the globe over the Northern Hemisphere, said Mark Prosser, study co-author and doctoral researcher at University of Ireland, Galway. Reading in the United Kingdom.
The jet stream, which flows like a river of air from west to east, is fueled by temperature differences between cooler regions to the north and warmer air masses to the south. Climate change may be disrupting the jet stream, which could have huge implications for future air travel, Prosser said.
“Planes like to fly with the jet stream,” he said, “but it’s ironic that all the turbulence is where airplanes like to fly.”
That instability is expected to increase as the world deteriorates. Prosser’s colleagues at the University of Reading separately used climate models to show how apparent air turbulence in the second half of this century could change if global warming continues. The researchers found that increasing greenhouse gas emissions also increased turbulence and instability.
“If you compare the climate of 2050 to 2080 to the climate before we started emitting greenhouse gases – so, pre-industrial times – there was a doubling, or tripling, of the amount of clear air turbulence in the atmosphere,” Prosser said. .
There were a total of 211 passengers and 18 crew members on the Singapore Airlines flight when it was jolted midair, the airline said in a statement. The plane suddenly dropped from 37,000 feet to 31,000 feet within five minutes, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.
The pilot declared a medical emergency and diverted the plane to the Thai capital, Bangkok, where it landed at 3:45 pm local time (4:45 am ET), the airline said.
Officials did not release the identity of the deceased passenger Tuesday.
The people on the flight were mainly from Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand, the airline said. There were four passengers from the United States.
“Singapore Airlines extends its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased,” the statement said. “We apologize for the traumatic experience our passengers and crew endured on this flight.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
