United passengers injured by severe turbulence

Several passengers were injured on Monday when a United Airlines flight from Denver to Billings, Montana, experienced severe turbulence

Daily Telegraph, 18 Feb 2014

By Oliver Smith

United Flight 1676, a Boeing 737 with 114 passengers and five crew members on board, was approaching Billings yesterday afternoon when it hit the turbulence. Three crew members and two passengers were hurt, prompting the captain to declare a medical emergency. All five were taken to hospital, while one flight attendant remained in care last night.

Joe Frank, 20, who was on board the flight, told The Denver Post: "The sudden drop pulled everyone out of their seats, and I mean hard. I didn't have my seat belt on, so I hit my head pretty hard. But what hurts is my lower back and hips."

He added that the turbulence saw an infant thrown from its parent's arms and into another nearby seat. The baby appeared unharmed, he said.

One woman hit her head so hard it cracked a panel on the ceiling, other passengers told KTVQ, a local television station.

Turbulence is the most common cause of injury to air passengers around the world, although extreme turbulence is relatively rare.

Steve Allright, a British Airways pilot, spoke to Telegraph Travel about the issue last year.

"Flight crews around the world share a common classification of turbulence: light, moderate and severe," he said. "Severe turbulence is extremely rare. In a flying career of over 10,000 hours, I have experienced severe turbulence for about five minutes in total. It is extremely uncomfortable but not dangerous. The aircraft may be deviating in altitude by up to 100 feet (30 metres) or so, up as well as down, but nothing like the thousands of feet you hear some people talking about when it comes to turbulence.

"I should stress that this level of turbulence is so rare that leisure travellers will almost certainly never experience it and nor will most business people."

Last year a scientific study claimed that severe turbulence would become more common in the future due to climate change.

Dr Paul Williams, a climate scientist from the University of Reading, was lead author on the 2013 study, said: "Turbulence encounters like that seen on Monday are relatively rare, but unfortunately we can expect them to become more frequent in the future. Although we can't attribute any one event to climate change our research has shown that airspace is becoming more turbulent because of climate change, especially in the winter months. Our study showed that the volume of transatlantic airspace containing significant turbulence will increase by between 40 per cent and 170 per cent by the middle of this century. The average strength of turbulence will also increase, by between 10 per cent and 40 per cent. Airlines and their passengers should certainly prepare for bumpier flights in the future."

In August last year, dozens were injured on a Thai Airways flight to Hong Kong after it encountered severe turbulence.