On Tuesday, May 21, a man lost his life on a Singapore Airlines plane, while dozens of others were injured. Currently, 20 are still in intensive care. The cause: “strong turbulence” during the journey of the plane which was to go from London to Singapore. In videos circulating on social networks, the state of the cabin attests to the violence of this turbulence. We see the ripped ceiling, bloodstains and the oxygen masks taken out…
An initial analysis of the data by flight tracking service Flightradar24 showed that the aircraft experienced extreme turbulence for more than a minute at around 11,300 meters above Myanmar, during which the plane crashed. rose violently then plunged several times. Within five minutes, the plane fell 1,800 meters, before making an emergency landing in Bangkok, Thailand.
Severe turbulence up 50% since 1979
Although accidents are quite rare, turbulence with such “severe” intensity has nevertheless increased, particularly over the North Atlantic. The turbulence that passengers may experience in an airplane is linked to changes in air current that affect the stability of a flight. They can be caused by thunderstorms, air movements around mountains, or even cold or warm air fronts. Concerning the flight affected on Tuesday, “the first elements seem to indicate turbulence in clear air, the most dangerous type of turbulence”, according to a press release from the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, representing several tens of thousands of flight attendants .
In the space of forty years, these turbulences have become more frequent and more severe. A British study published in June 2023 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that global warming increases in-flight turbulence. Through the analysis of atmospheric data over four decades of observations (between 1979 and 2020), the researchers revealed that over the North Atlantic, the total annual duration of severe turbulence increased by 55%, passing from 17.7 hours in 1979 to 27.4 hours in 2020. It is also one of the busiest air routes. Still according to the British study, moderate turbulence increased by 37%, and light turbulence by 17%.
“After a decade of research showing that climate change will increase clear-air turbulence in the future, we now have evidence to suggest that this increase has already begun,” explained Professor Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading at the time of publication of the study, of which he is co-author.
The researcher thus indicated that “climate change increases the temperature difference between the cold poles and the hot tropics”, the latter “warming up faster than the poles at cruising altitudes”. However, the warmer the air, the more it causes shearing, which in fact generates more turbulence.
Between 150 and 500 million dollars annual cost in the United States
In addition, this increase in turbulence is not without consequences on the devices. First, they can cause accidents like those of the Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday May 21. According to a 2021 report from the US National Transportation Safety Board, turbulence continues to be “a significant cause of accidents and injuries.”
There is also a risk for the plane. “The wear and tear of the equipment leads to additional costs due to the repairs and maintenance to be carried out”, explained in the columns of the Point former airline pilot Gérard Feldzer, today president of Aviation sans frontières. “A plane that flies in turbulence loses speed, so the journey takes longer and the aircraft consumes more fuel,” he emphasized. According to the American researchers co-authors of the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters Last year, In the United States alone, the cost of this turbulence would amount to between 150 and 500 million dollars per year.