LAST UPDATE | 27 May

CASES OF SEVERE, unforeseen turbulence are a “fairly regular event” and have only grabbed the public’s imagination in the last week because two incidents – one in Bangkok and one in Dublin – involved Irish people and came so close together, according to a flight safety expert. 

Yesterday, eight people were taken to hospital after arriving in Dublin on a Qatar Airways flight that experienced significant turbulence. That came after a Singapore Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok on Tuesday after severe turbulence left one man dead and injured over 100 people.

Michael Comyn, who used to run a course at Dublin Airport aimed at alleviating people’s fear of flying, told The Journal that people tend to be complacent about fastening their seat belts mid-flight and that this can result in injuries when a plane hits a patch of clear turbulence, which can’t be detected by radar.

“People are very happy to think about the idea that flying is like sitting in a hotel and, you know, you get to your destination. You’re not, you’re traveling in a vehicle at 600 miles an hour and people don’t wear their seatbelts when they should.”

The fact that the latest incident took place on a plane that landed in Dublin has meant there is extra media and public attention being paid to in-flight injuries, he says.

“It would only be in the news in Ireland because it was landing in Dublin and then it was obviously double the news by the fact that one had happened previously,” Comyn said.

“So then it becomes news, and then everybody’s terrified. When in fact, you’re far more likely to be injured in the car on the way to the airport than you are in turbulence.”

The first piece of advice Comyn has is for passengers to keep their seatbelt on for the duration of a flight, whether or not the light overhead is switched on.

“If they don’t follow the safety instructions and they don’t have their seatbelts on, in exactly the same way if you went over humpback bridge on a double-decker bus, you’d hit the ceiling, too.”

He added that there has been some level of misunderstanding about how people get injured when a plane hits an area of turbulence, with many headlines referencing a sudden drop in altitude. 

“In fact, the injury in turbulence is caused when the airplane goes up, not when it goes down.”

Again though, wearing your seatbelt is the best way to avoid injuries.

“It’s common. I mean, the biggest single cause of injury is not having your seatbelt fastened in a moving vehicle, where it’s subject to turbulence.

“17 cabin crew a year are injured around the world, because they’re obviously out in the cabins.”

Comyn also said that people can forget that they are in a moving vehicle while often ignoring the pre-flight safety briefing. 

“It’s really hard to kind of break that spell for people that you have to mind yourself. You see the minute the airplane lands people stand up and start getting their bags. Again, they’re still in a vehicle which is moving.

“The amount of people don’t pay attention to the safety demonstration is phenomenal. You have a 40% higher chance of surviving a survivable accident if you paid attention that day to the demonstration.”

The EU Commission has helped fund research into Lidar (Light detection and ranging) technology that scientists believe could help to detect patches of clear air turbulence at short to medium range, but more testing is needed to prove its efficacy.

Clear air turbulence has become more common in the last 40 years, according to some scientific research which points to climate change as a possible factor. But there are also more planes in the skies than ever before, which could also contribute to the increase in related incidents.