seven injured and emergency landing. What is this phenomenon

Buckle up. And keep them tight throughout the journey because the turbulence, especially the more insidious ones that occur with a clear sky, in English the Clear air turbulence, will be more and more frequent in flight. Climate change has to do with it. The good news is that thanks to ever more sophisticated weather forecasts and ever more reliable aircraft, the negative consequences will be reduced. However, the advice that commanders always give during the voloi.e. keeping the seat belts fastened even when it is not mandatory, must be followed.

Let’s start with the last event. Flight Lufthansa 469. Airbus 330 takes off from Austin, Texas on Wednesday. Destination Frankfurt. All quiet, but suddenly after an hour and a half, at 37,000 feet above Tennessee, the plane jolts, loses altitude, passengers who are not in their seats are thrown to the ground along with the flight attendants, as well as those without seat belts safety. Everything happens while meals are being served, so the carts fly from one part of the cabin to the other, the food remains all over the corridor as on a battlefield. A passenger, Susan Zimmerman, tells CNN: «First the plane suddenly climbed in altitude, then we fell a thousand feet. It was a free fall for five seconds, it was like a roller coaster, plates and glasses were all the way to the ceiling.”

Boeing 747, delivered the last plane: from passenger records, to the flight that scared Mandela, history of the Jumbo Jet

Luckily the wind shear lasts relatively little, the commander lands in Washington Dulles in Virginia. Seven wounded. The aeronautical authorities explain: it was an episode of Cat, clear-air turbulence. In 2017, 27 were injured on the Aeroflot Moscow-Bangkok flight due to an episode of Cat, in 2019, 33 passengers were treated for treatment on an Air Canada Vancouver-Sydney plane, again due to clear-air turbulence. Between 2009 and 2018, there were 111 turbulence-related incidents, according to the US government agency NTSB, almost one a month. Explains a report cited by Abcnews: most of the seriously injured passengers were standing or not wearing their seat belts. In total, according to the FAA, between 2009 and 2021 there were 146 injured due to the turbulence.

Plane struck by lightning, seven injured and emergency landing in Washington. «Broken glass in the cabin and food everywhere»

Fine, but why is open-air turbulence so insidious? Simply because it is not predictable, it occurs when the sky is clear or there are few clouds. The cause is connected, simplifying, to a temperature gradient, a change in temperature at altitude, which causes a sudden formation of irregular jet streams. Explains Thomas Guin, professor of meteorology quoted by Abcnews: turbulence in clear air most often occurs in or near high-altitude “rivers” of air called jet streams, in fact the final cause is wind shear, two huge masses of air close to each other moving at different speeds. The plane climbs one way, descends the other. According to Paul D. Williams, professor of atmospheric sciences in England, cited by various US networks, climate change is changing the temperature patterns in the upper atmosphere. At flight altitudes the tropics are warming faster than the poles, leading to greater north south temperature differences. And this leads to wind shear. The hope is that over time the techniques to avoid turbulence will improve, in the meantime it is better to always keep your seat belts fastened.

Read the full article
on The Messenger