Fasten your seatbelts

That looks rough as hell, I wonder how Boeing are going to play this.

"Despite our aircraft being subjected to the most extreme turbulence recorded in recent history, our aircraft remained airborne and in tact for the duration. We would like to offer our condolences to the families of the deceased and our best wishes to those who sustained injuries during this unprecedented event. pls invest ktnx <3 "
 
The news stories on this are predictably hopeless. Reports of it 'dropping 6,000ft in a few minutes' despite that being a normal rate of descent, and presumably a deliberate response to the turbulence rather than caused by it.
 
JonRGV250 said:

Does not look like fun.
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Although the media reporting the 6,000 ft drop as the cause is not correct. It didn’t drop 6,000 ft. It had already diverted to Bangkok and that was on descent. If it was 6,000 ft it would have shown people pinned to the roof and the pilot would have not likely kept control of the aircraft. It was probably 20-30 ft drop.
 
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I had a pretty bad one once flying over the arctic - dropped 100s of feet very rapidly (at least that is what the pilot said) - I watched my bottle of wine do acrobatics then take off down the plane like a bullet along with the same happening to a few other loose things around the cabin, fortunately no one was injured.
 
delta0 said:
Although the media reporting the 6,000 ft drop as the cause is not correct. It didn’t drop 6,000 ft. It had already diverted to Bangkok and that was on descent. If it was 6,000 ft it would have shown people pinned to the roof and the pilot would have not likely kept control of the aircraft. It was probably 20-30 ft drop.
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The reports of 6000ft over 5 minutes etc, thats a controlled descent not a sudden drop. But 20-30ft is also not a lot and seeing some of the damage posted out there to the internals it must have been very violent and not just a single small drop like that.
 
200sols said:
The reports of 6000ft over 5 minutes etc, thats a controlled descent not a sudden drop. But 20-30ft is also not a lot and seeing some of the damage posted out there to the internals it must have been very violent and not just a single small drop like that.
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It depends how sudden it was. I was referring to the quoted video that was deleted as it wasn’t from this flight. It will be interesting to see any videos. 20-30 ft is going to fling people into the roof and do a lot of damage. People tend to overestimate how much it drops. 100 ft with 100% loss of lift is going to pin you for 2.5s to the roof.
 
pastymuncher said:
When I was in the RAF I was onboard a Lockheed L1011 Tristar coming back from the Falklands after a 4 month tour during the 90's. We were flying along the west coast of Africa when the fasten seatbelt sign came on. This was just in time as we ran into some severe turbulence and the kite was being thrown around all over the place. The worst part was when everyone had that sensation when you leave your stomach behind when you drop and it turned out afterwards that we lost 500 feet in altitude. Everyone was bricking it and I thought my number was up but we eventually got through it and climb back to our assigned altitude. That was a couple of very scary minutes that seemed to drag on forever and luckily nobody was injured although quite a few sick bags were used up.
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Had something similar once and everyone wore their seatbelts too at least anyone with any sense. Plane just seemed to drop 10ft into nothingness and then stop with a bang and thrown from side to side, repeatedly, very unnerving.
 
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I wonder if a report of the plane evading a ground to air missile over Myanmar will ever come to light, and luckily missed unlike the malaysian air flight...
 
200w.gif
 
Was on a Monarch flight in the early 2000s and the generators in the engines failed, had to do an emergency landing at Ciampino airport. Pilot was throwing the plane into the ground before we ran out of electricity. Pretty sure a Britannia plane ended up taking us home.
 
Wonder if they were in the loo at the time, the turb hit the plane just as a massive turd was about to hit the stainless steel throne :eek:
 
Monkeynut said:
Was on a Monarch flight in the early 2000s and the generators in the engines failed, had to do an emergency landing at Ciampino airport. Pilot was throwing the plane into the ground before we ran out of electricity. Pretty sure a Britannia plane ended up taking us home.
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Was that a single engine or something?

IIRC almost all the modern passenger aircraft have at least one generator per engine and are in theory designed so that any fault is isolated (IE the aircraft can normally fly even with just 1 of 3 or 4 generators), although normally if they only have two or even worse one left running they'll treat it as an emergency.
 
I have to say, there's part of me thinking that given how bad the turbulence clearly was, it's comforting that the plane is capable of coming through it and staying airborne
 
Werewolf said:
Was that a single engine or something?

IIRC almost all the modern passenger aircraft have at least one generator per engine and are in theory designed so that any fault is isolated (IE the aircraft can normally fly even with just 1 of 3 or 4 generators), although normally if they only have two or even worse one left running they'll treat it as an emergency.
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Yes a lot of redundancy and in the event of complete failure they have a small turbine that drops from the undercarriage to power vital systems. Its entirely possible to land a plan without any engine power and its happened quite a few times over the years.
 
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