Scared of flying? Bad news as journeys are going to get even more turbulent

Dr Paul Williams, atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, says he has gathered evidence that turbulence is increasing due to climate change

Ian Fletcher | Daily Mirror | 25 March 2016

Airline passengers are being warned to fasten their seatbelts and brace themselves for a very bumpy ride - because scary flights are set to increase in the future.

And climate change is being blamed for the growing fears that the frequency and strength of turbulence will put more planes at risk of being involved in dramatic incidents and even crash landings.

Dr Paul Williams, atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading in Berkshire, says that he has gathered evidence that turbulence is increasing, making flying more 'scary', more uncomfortable and more expensive, because of climate change.

He says that there are set to be more emergency landings and climate change is making it more likely that plane passengers are going to suffer more alarming air turbulence in the future.

Dr Williams, of the Department of Meteorology, highlights his fears for the future in an hour-long TV documentary Super Scary Plane Landings which is being screened on Channel 5 on Friday.

Dr Williams tells the programme: "We do have good reason to believe that the frequency and strength of clear air turbulence is strengthening because of climate change on some flight routes including the very popular North Atlantic flight route between Europe and North America.

"And that's because climate change is strengthening the wind shears so there's more rubbing up, there's more friction between the layers of the atmosphere in the jet stream and that's causing turbulence to increase in strength by 10 to 40%.

"We've calculated later this century but also simply for the amount of the atmosphere at flight levels that contain significant turbulence to double in volume so that's an increase in the average strength but also an increase in simply the amount of turbulence in the skies."

The documentary says that pilots really do say 'MAYDAY' and with a staggering total of 80,000 aircraft flying every day across the globe, landings do go wrong.

When analysts looked at every crash worldwide in a 10-year period, they found that it is in the final seconds that we are especially at risk. For the programme says that while flying is getting safer - more than half of the fatal crashes that do occur happen as the plane is coming in to land.

Dr Williams added: "You can just hit a wall of turbulence out of the blue. In turbulence that strong there will be periods of time when the passengers are in freefall, literally weightless.

"Gravity can't pin them down strongly enough - so they will lift up out of their seats."