> Passengers reported they were told one of the flight attendants had suffered a broken rib, another person a fractured leg. The trolleys had been lifted and impacted the cabin ceiling and fell to the floor several times, passengers not wearing their seat belts also hit the cabin ceiling. The crew announced they had lost more than 1000 feet of altitude, they hadn't seen such severe turbulence ever before.
I do, I tighten it for take off/landing and loosen it a little once we are at cruise - it's not even noticeable but it's better than impacting the ceiling.
Yeah, I've heard enough stories of people getting hurt on passenger planes from unexpected turbulence that I always have the seatbelt on during the entirety of any flight. Could make the difference between getting a severe injury or not!
Looks like they flew right over convective while everyone else flew around it. Attempt to save fuel? Gotta justify Delta tickets being double everyone else’s.
...and as if on queue the narrative around climate "crisis" is woven into an article about a plane experiencing turbulence: experts say the issue is getting worse in an era of climate crisis. Do publications like the Guardian have narrative quotas they need to achieve?
That paper has nothing to do with the incident in question. You're referencing a BBC article that references a paper stating that Clear Air Turbulence is getting worse [1]
> Turbulence is unpleasant to fly through in an aircraft. Strong turbulence can even injure air passengers and flight attendants. An invisible form called clear-air turbulence
But in the incident in question, the plane flew directly through a convective storm.
if you actually read the cited study it boils down to "we plugged in numbers and these neat heatmaps came out" and if you look at the dates it's 1979 and 2020 (in the heatmaps) and i wonder how much of that is actual location accuracy. i notice the word "accuracy" isn't in the study. that is, there were both less flights and less accuracy of actual location in 1979 (no GPS, etc); and more flights and actually accurate location information "today". It explains the heatmap differences without having to model climate at all. It would be more interesting if there was a similar, zoomed map over some coastal route during daytime for the two years where the pilots knew exactly where they were at nearly all times.
it's a fresh "model" and if you've used an LLM you know how useful models are; and the sorts of models used in these studies are about 1 billionth the size.
Further, their own dataset shows massive areas with decreased turbulence. I guess the sun and CO2 don't work there?
Page 34. They have a graph. "After normalizing the data by annual flight hours, there was no obvious trend over time for turbulence-related Part 121 accidents during this [30 year] period."
BBC article is citing some academics doing a modeling exercise. They never learn. Academics can prove the sky is green if they're allowed to play with R for long enough. That paper isn't measuring actual turbulence, they try to derive it from physical models, but their models must suck because they draw a totally different conclusion to the real world experience of accident investigators. Evidence > academic theories.
Could be many things. Did they consider whether the incidence of seat belt wearing has decreased? It doesn't seem that far-fetched that compliance with the directive to fasten seat belts has decreased along with respect for authority.
"Turbulence has long been a problem for air travelers, but experts say the issue is getting worse in an era of climate crisis which produces more extreme atmospheric conditions."
Readit News
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL56/history/202507...
Track log https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL56/history/202507...
Looks like something happened around 19:20
https://avherald.com/h?article=52b0a50c&opt=0
She was once flung to the ceiling (and then back to the floor) while trying to get back to her seat.
Climate change causing turbulence increase is well acknowledged https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-severe-turbulenc...
> Turbulence is unpleasant to fly through in an aircraft. Strong turbulence can even injure air passengers and flight attendants. An invisible form called clear-air turbulence
But in the incident in question, the plane flew directly through a convective storm.
[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL10...
it's a fresh "model" and if you've used an LLM you know how useful models are; and the sorts of models used in these studies are about 1 billionth the size.
Further, their own dataset shows massive areas with decreased turbulence. I guess the sun and CO2 don't work there?
ya, HN, i know.
https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101....
Page 34. They have a graph. "After normalizing the data by annual flight hours, there was no obvious trend over time for turbulence-related Part 121 accidents during this [30 year] period."
BBC article is citing some academics doing a modeling exercise. They never learn. Academics can prove the sky is green if they're allowed to play with R for long enough. That paper isn't measuring actual turbulence, they try to derive it from physical models, but their models must suck because they draw a totally different conclusion to the real world experience of accident investigators. Evidence > academic theories.
I would have thought the main reason the issue is more common is simply there are far more flights.
lol