A Singapore Airlines 777-300 at FL370 approximately 210 miles from VTBB encountered severe turbulence that caused the death of a 73-year-old passenger from a heart attack and injured several passengers and A/V.

The pilots diverted to Bangkok airport where they arrived after about 30 minutes.

According to Thai media there was another death but the Bangkok authorities only confirmed the pax's death from a heart attack.

In this video you can see the considerable damage inside the plane:

 

 

Ouchie magoochies! 😲🤕   (Sorry for my overly technical medical language!)

Jeez , that looks bad.

A quick scan of the current sig wx chart shows no jet stream or CAT activity in that area, but a shed load of 50,000ft CB activity.

I suspect there may be some questions asked around what happened and what avoiding action was taken, but not for me to speculate further.

Those SQ guys are good, and that’s their back yard so they will be very familiar with equatorial CBs , but something has gone wrong somewhere.

I don’t like to see cabin crew scared and bleeding like that, it’s upsetting to me personally as an airline captain.

Flightradar24 published ADS-B data sent by SQ321.

Data indicates the turbulence event occurred at 07:49 UTC.

https://x.com/flightradar24/status/1792927321935987078

That looks convective alright 

A reflection should be made on whether to always make the use of seat belts compulsory when sitting.

Since my first flight back in 1970, I have always left my seat belt fastened during the flight and I must say that in two sudden circumstances and always in clear skies, the use of the seat belt was providential but both for these images and for my experiences, it is clear that having your seat belt always fastened is not enough to save you from everything that "flies" and then comes back over your head, even if you have your seat belt fastened.

Obviously they are the A/V most at risk and one thing I was thinking about, especially for airplane aisles, could be an automatic release like for oxygen masks, of inflatable protectors on the upper part of the aisles and above the passenger seats to try to protect both pax and A/V.

On 5/21/2024 at 5:05 PM, jon b said:

suspect there may be some questions asked around what happened and what avoiding action was taken, but not for me to speculate further.

 

You can't predict clear air turbulence though, can you? So couldn't be predicted or avoided.

On 5/21/2024 at 6:02 PM, jon b said:

That looks convective alright 

Jon, does that mean CBs were in the vicinity? If so would they show up on Wx radar? Or is it possible to have such instability without any warning visible on instruments?

I’ve only experienced bad turbulence once. Departure from Malaga in Sept 20 odd years ago. Cabin crew were told to take seats for a few minutes. Monarch A320. Pretty bumpy but nothing like the Singapore.

1 minute ago, jon b said:

and again as far as I know there were no other severe turbulence incidents reported by other aircraft so very localised

I was wondering about that given it must be a busy route. But like the shooting down of the Malaysian over Ukraine in 2014 it could have happened to any number of aircraft flying the same route. Just bad luck I guess.

42 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Jon, does that mean CBs were in the vicinity? If so would they show up on Wx radar? Or is it possible to have such instability without any warning visible on instruments?

I’ve only experienced bad turbulence once. Departure from Malaga in Sept 20 odd years ago. Cabin crew were told to take seats for a few minutes. Monarch A320. Pretty bumpy but nothing like the Singapore.

Ray, yes there were large areas of 50,000ft CB activity, as there almost always is in that area.

That should be visible on radar however you can quite often have large convective areas of cloud that are still very dangerous but do not appear on radar as the don’t have sufficient moisture to generate a radar return.  
If this was at night , and I suspect it was , the radar is all they’d have to work on. 
It’s possible to believe the clouds are below you when interpreting the radar picture and fly into the top of a big CB above its “ moisture level’ as described above. I’ve done that before at night , and it’s quite frankly horrible.

Make no mistake, traversing a large line of massive tropical CBs at night using a radar is neither easy nor pleasant, it’s very stressful in fact.

When you have imbedded CBs some show on the radar, and some don’t. Big clouds can soak up the radar signal and produce “radar shadows” in which other even more menacing clouds can be hiding, remaining hidden until you’re almost upon them.

It’s pitch black then a sudden flash lights up a huge tower of previously unseen cloud right on your nose, that’s a constant feature of flying across the ITCZ down to Africa at night, personally I’d be happy never to have to do that again.

The area this incident took place is also on the tropics and well known for its convective weather ,I used to fly there years ago, and for those SQ guys it’s their back yard so they’d be well skilled in avoidance. 
 

However , you don’t get the avoidance right every time , At happens to all of us at some point and this incident is the sort of outcome it can lead to. If indeed it was a case of entering a CB at night, I don’t know , again only casual speculation.

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by jon b

18 minutes ago, jon b said:

If this was at night , and I suspect it was

The emergency was declared at 08:45GMT (15:45 Local) so in daylight. Surely those massive CBs would be visible. Would it have been feasible to divert around them?

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

 

You can't predict clear air turbulence though, can you? So couldn't be predicted or avoided.

Well you can, on a large scale at least, and sigmet areas are then published and where possible avoided.
As far as I’ve seen the only mention of CAT has come from the media who haven’t got a clue what that actually means, but are still very quick to  state that these incidents are increasing due to “ a specific reason”  which I’m not allowed to mention here. This is complete and utter ****, and has had me searching for my tv licence to finally cancel it. The reason such events have increased is simply due to the increase in aircraft flying, CAT and convective weather have always been a feature of aviation, especially CBs in the tropics.

The significant weather charts of the area had large areas of 50,000 CB activity, the ADS-B data shows a sudden rapid climb, which is indicative of flying into a CB (or potentially mountain wave, but that would have lasted longer), and again as far as I know there were no other severe turbulence incidents reported by other aircraft so very localised . All of which point to entering a CB, but again just casual speculation on my part, I’ve not looked into the incident in detail.

 

12 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The emergency was declared at 08:45GMT (15:45 Local) so in daylight. Surely those massive CBs would be visible. Would it have been feasible to divert around them?

In that case , they could have been in cloud with embedded CBs. Just as bad as flying at night, just everything is white rather than black 😄

In both cases you’d be reliant upon your radar. There maybe what seems like a path through and end up getting suckered or mislead into a blind alley type situation.

Bear in mind in the tropics the ITCZ  CB line can  stretch for 100s of miles, sometimes you can’t go around , your only option is pick a way through, or indeed my preferred option… retirement !