“That’s a type of turbulence (CAT) that is not associated with cloud. It’s not associated with thunderstorms.” — Aviation expert Dr. Shawn Pruchnicki of Ohio University
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(SDN) — Traveling is such a joy, including on board airplanes, the quickest means to reach one’s destination.
Going on a journey to other countries is always a learning experience, an introduction to other cultures, how people regard or treat visitors, how welcoming they are to strangers, how hospitable they are.
These and many other things travelers will learn and imbibe when they return to their country of origin.
Remember American literary great, writer and author Samuel Clemens, the Mark Twain of our favorite Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in our youth?
He was a traveler himself. He had visited the Philippines during the American colonial period.
Mark Twain’s words about visiting other countries: “Traveling erases bigotry.”
Yes, that’s one benefit of traveling!
But traveling also has its perils whatever mode of transportation you are on. Including on airplanes.
Wear seat belts at all times when seated
Cabin attendants — stewards and stewardesses — have always encouraged passengers to put their seat belts on when seated, even when the Seat Belt sign is off.
Many passengers know the reason: It is for safety. Bu others do not follow instructions, and they are the ones that get thrown to the plane’s ceiling when turbulence occurs.
It is because, as shown presently this week, turbulence may, without warning or indications in the pilots’ monitors in the cockpit, hit your aircraft.
Turbulence when the weather during your flight is bad and the clouds are dark 33,000 feet or higher above ground the pilots will always put the Seat Belt sign switched on. They will also announce over the public address system of the plane to keep seated with seat belts engaged well, and to avoid using the lavatories. For safety.
But it’s wholly different when your plane is cruising above the clouds and the weather is sunny, clear, not a sight of dark clouds. Instances like these, the pilots will most likely switch off the Seat Belt sign, which is above every seat.
As borne by incidents this past week of May, turbulence without warning or indications on the pilots’ weather monitors, or aircraft system, can happen. It is called “clear air turbulence”. And it can be deadly.
First it was Singapore Airlines (SIA), Boeing 777’s flight SQ321 that encountered a severe clear-air turbulence on May 21 while above Myanmar’s airspace. The turbulence resulted in the death of 73-year-old British passenger, Geoffrey Ralph Kitchen (said to be due to a heart attack), and serious/critical to slight injuries to more than 100 of the 211 passengers and 18 crew on board.
Some of the passengers suffered “spinal cord, brain and skull injuries”.
The SIA flight had to divert to Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok where it landed safetly. It was a flight from London, England, to Singapore’s Changi International Airport.
A few days later, Qatar Airways flight QR107, a Boeing B787-9 Dreamliner also encountered turbulence while airborne over Turkey, traveling on Sunday, May 26, from Doha, Qatar, to Dublin, Ireland. The aircraft landed safely in Dublin with 12 passengers sustaining injuries (authorities did not disclose how serious were the injuries of the six passengers and six crew members).
Then just inside a week, still another aircraft, Turkish Airlines flight TK2320 Airbus A321-231, a small body aircraft, was hit by turbulence on a flight from Istanbul to Izmir, a flying time of around 50 minutes. The midair incident happened after Qatar Airways’ Dreamliner’s flight to Dublin.
News reports said a crew member sustained a broken back, as the sudden drop of the plane threw her up the ceiling and fell hard down the floor. She suffered a broken vertebra, Business Insider quoted Hürriyet, the largest newspaper of Turkey.
It seems traveling on airplanes has become a bit more dangerous because of the spates of turbulence, especially the clear air turbulence (CAT) that can hardly be detected by airplanes’ computer systems. That’s what hit Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 and Qatar Airways flight QR107, says a news report on rnz.co.nz, citing an aviation expert.
Dr. Shawn Pruchnicki, airline accident investigator and lecturer at Ohio University in the United States, was quoted as saying “both incidents seemed like they were caused by Clear Air Turbulence (CAT)”, referring to the flight SQ321 and Qatar Airways’ Dreamliner flight QR107.
“That’s a type of turbulence that is not associated with cloud. It’s not associated with thunderstorms,” Pruchnicki points out, adding aircraft systems can only pick up turbulence when moisture — rain — is involved.
“It uses the moisture flying around in the air to detect turbulence. When it’s clear air turbulence those sensors do not pick that up.”
Bad news is that the aviation expert said he was not aware if there’s technology that could aid pilots to detect CAT before it hit their aircraft.
Only jet streams, he emphasized, which can help predict CAT ahead of time, if the pilot is aware of it. “Jet stream is that tunnel of air that goes all the way around the world. There’s several of them and you have very smooth air around.”
Pruchnicki said at present science has no answer to predicting CAT.
Saying that CAT could happen at any time of the day, believed that climate change has potential contributions in making turbulence more frequent.
Wikipedia described what CAT is.
“In meteorology, clear-air turbulence (CAT) is the turbulent movement of air masses in the absence of any visual clues such as clouds and is caused when bodies of air moving at widely different speeds meet.”
AGU Publications cited “evidence” of increased frequency of CAT, with “severe-or-greater CAT increased the most, becoming 55% more frequent in 2020 than 1979.”
“CAT is predicted to become more frequent because of climate change…CAT has increased over the past four decades, consistent with the expected effects of climate change.”
In the face of this development, which makes flying unpleasant — and dangerous — travelers have to be vigilant, follow cabin crew members’ instructions to the letter as it could spell between safety and broken bones as shown by the recent turbulent-related Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways, and Turkish Airlines flights.
On the other hand, travelers fly, because of important trips, whether for business or for pleasure, or for both, will continue to take commercial flights, being the quickest mode of transportation, and considered still the safest.
We just have to put on our seat belts when we are seated, even when the Seat Belt sign is switched off.
Happy and safe traveling! (/)
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Sources:
SimplyFlying, Yahoo News, Al-Jazeera, Business Insider India, CBSNews, RNZ.co.nz, Daily News (Hurriyet).