If you spend any time at all online at the moment, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a terrifying time to be an air passenger.

Boeing in particular has faced a slew of claims about the safety of his aircraft.

Several whistleblowers have raised concerns, a series of high-profile incidents, including a door blowing off an Alaska Airlines flight in January, have caused understandable concern.

And yesterday a British man tragically died of a suspected heart attack after

Singapore Airlines flight hit severe turbulence and plunged 6,000 feet.

So should we be alarmed?

Was there one better to ask than CNN Star, an aviation mega brain?

Richard Quest, who I've spoken to in many years. Richard, great to see you.

Good to see you, Pearce. It's a fascinating story, this one, of the Singapore flight, because in

essence, it could happen to any one of us that flies. There are no unique factors about this case

other than you have a plane that is flying along and all of a sudden gets hit by turbulence.

But what's interesting, Pears, is that the height that this plane went up and down was not thousands of feet.

It was only several hundred feet at each time, but the ferocity because of what's

known as the vertical rate of ascent, that's what was so powerful. This plane was being pummeled up

and pummeled down several hundred feet a minute, and that's why it was so difficult.

And ultimately, what level did it go from and to by the end of this?

Right. Now, this is where not that much. The greatest differential of feet seems to be about

300. So it goes from 37,000 up to 37150 and then maybe down to 36,700.

Right.

The confusion here, Peers, is people of confusing later on where they see the plane descending to 31,000 feet.

But if you look at the chart, that is a controlled descent on autopilot, and it's a continual descent down to a lower

level. The actual incident, the differential is from bottom to top, is about 400 feet, but it happens

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