SINGAPORE - A Singapore Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing in Bangkok on May 21 afterwhich resulted in one death and dozens of passengers injured.
Turbulence can be caused by storms, mountains, weather fronts and strong air currents such as jet streams, said the professor of urban climatology at the National University of Singapore’s department of Geography. The World Meteorological Organisation called wind shear is a “major hazard” for aviation, especially when operating at lower altitudes.America’s National Transportation Safety Board reported that more than a third of all airline incidents in the United States from 2009 through 2018 were related to turbulence, most of which resulted in one or more serious injuries but no damage to the plane.
They sustained injuries that required hospitalisation lasting more than 48 hours, such as fractures, severe haemorrhages and damage to internal organs.In a study published in 2023, Dr Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading, said severe clear air turbulence over the North Atlantic Ocean has increased by more than 50 per cent during 1979 to 2020.
“The projections are that with climate change, clear air turbulence will increase by a factor of two or three,” he said. The study said that this will have “potentially drastic weather-related consequences for societies on both sides of the Atlantic”.Data from the NTSB, which is the agency for civil transportation accident investigation in the US, showed that from 2009 to 2018, the most commonly reported activity for passengers who were injured in a turbulence-related accident was when they were either using, waiting for or walking to or from the toilet.