Can airlines, officials better forecast severe turbulence to help avoid it?
Global News
A Qatar Airways flight saw 12 people injured following severe turbulence, with dozens injured and one dead on a Singapore Airlines flight last week after it hit rough air.
After at least 12 people were injured on Sunday when a Qatar Airways flight hit turbulence, questions continue to mount on the rough air’s impact on travel and what’s being done by airlines and other officials to better predict it.
The Qatar flight had left Doha en route to Dublin when it hit turbulence, with the airline saying: “a small number of passengers and crew sustained minor injuries in flight and are now receiving medical attention.”
It marked the second turbulence-related event resulting in injury within a week, following the Singapore Airlines incident on May 21. And it’s expected that the severity of turbulence will only get worse with climate change.
While technology is getting better at predicting these rough patches of air, some experts say there’s more to be done.
Turbulence is the irregular motion of the air, resulting from eddies and vertical currents, according to the National Weather Service, and usually comes from heavy storms or flying over mountain ranges.
What can be difficult, if not impossible to avoid, is what’s known as clear air turbulence, often found in or near the high-altitude rivers of air called jet streams. The culprit is ‘wind shear’, when two huge air masses close to each other move at difference speeds. If that’s big enough, the atmosphere is unable to handle the strain and it breaks into turbulent patterns.
“Clear air turbulence means there’s no clouds, there’s no point of reference, there is nothing that shows you visually or on your instruments that there is an indication of severe upset of the air in front of you,” McGill University faculty lecturer in aviation management John Gradek told Global News Monday.
Aside from clear-air turbulence, which can be difficult to avoid, some of the most common turbulence comes from thunderstorms or air around mountain — both of which can sometimes be avoided by flying around them.
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