A veteran pilot and investigator of aviation accidents has speculated that global warming was to blame for the horrific jet crash that killed one person and wounded scores more.
On Tuesday, while flying from London to Singapore, around sixty Australians were on board flight SQ321. The Boeing 777-300ER plane suddenly plummeted over six thousand feet, sending everyone on board hurtling towards the aircraft’s ceiling.
Pictures obtained inside the aircraft showed a horrific image of destruction, with blood all over the faces of the flight attendants, oxygen masks hanging from the broken ceiling, and trash in every aisle.
An unanticipated area of turbulent air pressure led the jet to make an emergency landing at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok eleven hours into the flight, resulting in the accident.
A 73-year-old musical theater director from Gloucestershire, UK, named Geoffrey Kitchen passed away from what seems to have been a heart attack, while eight Australians ended up in the hospital after suffering injuries in the mayhem.
Tim Atkinson, an aviation expert and ex-accident investigator, said the 777 is the largest and the most solid airframe flying around the world. He noted that the triple-seven was considered a very well-built aircraft in the aviation and flying communities and that the turbulence that affected it had to have been really severe.
Mr. Atkinson said that the aircraft was renowned among pilots, and turbulence over the Intertropical Convergence Zone had to be severe for it to have this effect.
Everyone on board, Mr. Atkinson said, should always wear their seatbelts.
He said the aviation industry is now attempting to address the increasing frequency and severity of turbulence caused by climate change. Turbulence during flights is being worsened by climate change, according to a worldwide research conducted last year by Reading University in the UK. The study also indicated that this tendency would continue.
It discovered that the overall yearly length of severe turbulence rose by 55% from 17.7 hours in 1979 to 27.4 hours in 2020 at a typical site in the North Atlantic, one of the world’s busiest routes.
