Flight Radar Storm Isha

[BrennieGirl]

Anyone perusing Flight Radar tonight? There are lots of flights being diverted from the Irish airports. This poor flight from Paris to Dublin was diverted to Belfast and then Glasgow.

Now think Paris unless it's a big circle.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but there are often people on these threads who are knowledgeable about aviation.Does anyone know what happened on the London to Singapore flight today? I’ve never heard of turbulence killing somebody. I guess there is turbulence we have all experienced and then there is turbulence where the plane drops 600ft in a short space of time?

There's a note on the website of Reading University, which has a strong meteorology and climate department, probably because until 20 years ago the Met Office was headquartered nearby.

One paragraph says
"The last fatality caused by clear-air turbulence on a commercial flight occurred on 28 December 1997, on a United Airlines flight from Tokyo to Honolulu. Other forms of turbulence have caused more recent fatalities, but as far as I am aware there has not been a turbulence fatality on a commercial flight since 2009."

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2024/Expert-Comment/Turbulence-is-apparent-cause-of-flight-death#:~:text=%22The%20last%20fatality%20caused%20by,a%20commercial%20flight%20since%202009.

Glad I'm not the only plane nerd.

What do you make of this flight path?

They're saying he was 73 years old and may have been a heart attack, likely from the stress of the turbulence but not directly from it

It looks completely normal on Playback on my Flight Radar app.

As @Chersfrozenface has pointed out it’s vanishing rare.

I’d take initial reports of what went on today with a massive pinch of salt to say the very least.

Flightradar doesn’t have the resolution to analyse the short term changes in height and speed that you get in turbulence so be wary of some of the numbers your seeing in the press right now.

As a FWIW as a general point you can actually be sitting in quite severe turbulence and the aircraft altitude may only waver 50-100 feet at most of the assigned altitude but it can feel horrible.

As far as the Singapore flight goes the aircraft is reported by vaguely credible sources to have descended 6000 feet in three minutes - that isn’t a “plunge,”, that looks more like a controlled normal descent, maybe a step down to get out of the turbulence, and/or start the diversion.

Oh and above all if you see “air pocket” in a report it means the journalist or whoever is commenting really has not got a scooby do about aviation.

The BBC News story has eye witnesses describing people hitting their heads on the baggage bins.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8889d7x8j4o

There are quite a few people injured

Looks like the tracking/app/data coming down was slightly screwed up for a few moments TBH…

According to the BBC, Singapore Airlines have said that 31 people who were on board the plane have been taken to hospital and the other passengers and crew are being checked and treated as necessary at Bangkok Airport.

Does it specify the 73 year old man that died hit his head? 🤔

Seeing as Sky News are one of the worse for using “air pockets” at this stage I’d treat their reports on this with as much caution as I would anything coming out of any other news agency (BBC are as bad).

According to the BBC News live feed, it seems to be the Thai authorities (unspecified) who have said that the poor man who died "likely suffered a heart attack".

Thank you everyone, as I expected this is the place to hear a sensible account of what may have happened. Hopefully by the time the evening news rolls around they will have something more concrete to report. If you are going to scatter your reports with the word may or likely, why even bother.

TBH even the Evening news is way too soon to get a solid handle on what really happened..there will be some interesting stuff in the official report(s) but they will be weeks/months off.

Who will investigate? The Singapore Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) as it's a Singapore Airlines plane?

Any input from other states whose citizens have died or been injured?

It would be Singapore led, but without going into ICAO annexes to look up definitions and then what that means in terms of investigation I’m not sure how much actual direct input other states would get, but I’d expect them to be kept fully up to speed with findings.

It appears the man who died was British.

The BBC says
"Some news from Singapore's Ministry of Transport, who say they will be deploying investigators to Bangkok.

In a statement, Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB) officials say they will liaise with counterparts in Thailand to look into the Singapore Airlines flight SQ321."

Per Reuters, the US National Transportation Safety Board says it will be sending an accredited representative and four technical advisors to support the team from Singapore.