Singapore Airlines flight that took off from London to travel to Singapore uh it actually ended up being diverted to Bangkok landed at 8:00 uh London well British time uh this morning uh carrying more than 200 passengers 18 crew uh the airline has confirmed but one passenger died and more than 30 others injured we don't how.
Severe those injuries have been but how often does this happen let's talk to Simon CER his travel correspondent at the independent he's live for us from Soul airport good morning to you uh yes good morning thank you for joining us indeed Simon it's absolutely extraordinary isn't it Singapore Airlines issued a statement say they.
Offered their deepest condolence to the family of the deceased look I mean I always wear my seat belt if I'm in my seat I put my seat belt on I dgly only get up to go to the L maybe stretch my legs on a very long haul flight but um how how often do do people get severely injured let alone die as a result of this sort of turbulence in the.
Air unfortunately we do see a number of injuries um not sort of every day probably not every week probably about once a month or so an aircraft somewhere in the world will encounter such severe turbulence that people are thrown around the cabin and injuries take place there is some scientific evidence that actually the amount of turbulence is.
Increasing because of uh climate change oh for goodness sake Simon um but well why would it be I mean this is just such nonsense they only they only got the funding for that research because they said it was to do with climate change I'll bet you anything well um be that as it may the um we haven't had an increase in we.
Haven't had an increase in uh extreme weather of any sort or the incidents or the or the extreme the the uh uh extent of it so I'm not quite sure that why that would increase turbance but there we are um well anyway yes the aircraft took off perfectly normally Singapore Airlines flight 32 1 out of Heath row um about 2211 last night British time I it.
Appears from the research I've been able to do here as though the incident happened um just off the southern tip of uh Myanmar Burma and it was over the Bay of Bengal which is a well-known area for uh clear air turbulence and all kinds of buffeting around it appears then that the aircraft was in a cruise at 37,000 ft that it immediately began really.
Quite a steep descent and landed about um 40 minutes later at Bangkok Airport um well clearly we learned of this um terrible tragedy and the fact that 30 people are seriously injured and yes of course anybody who's on a plane should keep their seat belt fastened it's much safer isn't it what what actually is turbulence because you understand oh.
We're going through a storm and they'll say we're going through a storm you know put your seat belts on and some of us have been I've been in turbant where it's been really very very scary and quite a few of us have like few a few perhaps not chosen Yelps of of fear at at Key moments but you could be in completely apparently clear you should.
Say clear air everything looks absolutely fine and suddenly the plane just sort of shudders what actually happens well it's very simply that it enters a pocket in which there is a severe downdraft and that can happen for all sorts of reasons um a lot of the time you hear reports from people saying that the aircraft plummeted hundreds or.
Thousands of feet that's very rarely the case um also saying that well there's also no yeah exactly yes very very scary but actually if you're if you're strapped in um if everybody else is but of course you they probably would have been serving breakfast at about that time they were about 90 minutes after Singapore so it.
Would be quite likely people were waking up maybe going to Lou having breakfast served to them so there are a number of people active in aircraft at that time and uh you you can't really um mitigate against that uh Pilots are very good at um communicating when there's severe turbulence but I'll tell you what I was coming over to to Soul um we hit a.
Pocket of turbulance um over China close to Beijing and that caused the aircraft really to Lurch um quite quite alarmingly there were streaks and so on um it was all perfectly safe and modern aircraft cannot be downed by turbulence they can handle it better but it is still as we know it can be fatal really appreciate.
You join
I endure in mind one thing like this happening loads of years ago sooner than world warming became as soon as birthed. Practically same space.
she is by a long way the worst interviewer – Worldwide.
U suck in reporting