SINGAPORE: On May 21, around 10 hours into Singapore Airlines flight 321 from London to Singapore, the aircraft encountered “sudden severe turbulence,” to quote SIA CEO Goh Choon Phong.
While the area over Myanmar where the plane encountered turbulence, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, is well-known for such incidents, what happened to SQ321 was so severe that the plane dropped around 6,000 feet in about three minutes, which is 2,000 feet per minute or 33 feet per second.as “an irregular motion of the air resulting from eddies and vertical currents.” It’s important to note that turbulence is associated with weather events such as cold fronts or thunderstorms.
“Turbulence on flights can be caused by storms, mountains, and strong air currents called jet streams. A 2023 study from the University of Reading that looked into turbulence over the last four decades shows that the number of incidents has increased significantly during this period.