June 19th - Myth-busting around air turbulence
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A British Airways flight from Singapore to London Heathrow hit such severe turbulence over the Bay of Bengal that the plane had to return to its starting point where possible damage was checked. Several BA cabin crew were injured in the incident, in the early hours of 16 June. One newspaper report was headlined: “We were in freefall for 1,000ft.” That did not happen. But just how dangerous is turbulence – and is it getting worse? I’ve been investigating.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's a busy old |
| 0:08.1 | Monday morning the 19th of June and welcome to the working week if that is indeed what you are doing. |
| 0:15.8 | There's a number of people who will have had quite a tricky weekend. My thoughts go out to the British Airways cabin |
| 0:25.3 | crew who very sadly were injured during an episode of severe turbulence on a flight from Singapore |
| 0:31.5 | to London Heathrow. I trust they are making speedy recoveries. But today I want to talk about turbulence, what it is and how it is not going to make planes fall out of the sky. |
| 0:45.9 | One of the newspaper reports into the incident involving BA 12, where early hours of Friday morning, |
| 0:53.9 | it was pretty much in the middle of the |
| 0:56.4 | Bay of Bengal between Sri Lanka and Thailand, about two hours into its 13-hour flight. |
| 1:03.6 | It was flying along perfectly normally at 30,000 feet when, according to one report, |
| 1:09.3 | we were in free-for for 1,000 feet. |
| 1:12.5 | I can be absolutely confident in saying the aircraft was not in free fall for 1,000 feet. |
| 1:19.2 | I can also be confident in saying it must have been extraordinarily alarming and concerning and distressing for passengers. |
| 1:27.4 | Turbulance is, this was severe clear air turbulence. |
| 1:32.7 | Passengers should have been strapped in. Cabin crew were active doing what they have to do and several of them were injured. |
| 1:39.3 | The captain decided to return to Singapore. Now, in the way that, of course, air traffic control was |
| 1:48.1 | prescribed altitude, it travelled back at 29,000 feet, so 1,000 feet lower, which may possibly |
| 1:56.4 | account for some of the reports that this was a fall of 1,000 feet. |
| 2:01.8 | It would have been a controlled descent. |
| 2:04.2 | And the plane landed safely. |
| 2:05.8 | It was checked for structural damage. |
| 2:07.5 | Medical care arranged for the injured and the plane is now back in London. |
| 2:12.0 | Heath Road, BA says safety is always our priority. |
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