> "[...] very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop [...]"
Nose tipping up, followed by steep drop. Sounds like the plane stalled.
In this case several news sites even claim it dropped 6000ft. But if you read the Avherald report (often a very good source) or look at the ADS-B data, you'll see they descended 6000ft in approximately 10 minutes. So that was just the crew deciding to get out of the turbulence by changing altitude in a normal way.
You don't stall a jet from turbulence unless you're far higher than the maximum allowed altitude or otherwise way outside normal flight parameters.
why was meal service provided when the staff is aware of the weather conditions? the seatbelt sign is usually shown at a slight deterioration of weather, i wonder why they went ahead with this.
thoughts and prayers.
Stay absolutely seated and fastened for the whole flight;
VS.
Stay absolutely seated and fastened for the whole flight with a few breaks to walk around and stretch your legs.
PS: Yes, sitting without fastening your seatbelt is just plain stupid.
eg wiggle your toes, flex your leg muscles, rock your feet, etc.
All you need do is avoid pinch points which block blood flow.
These are routinely taught to solders on point duty, pilots on long flights, patients confined to bed,etc.
> "Some people hit their heads on the baggage cabins overhead and dented it, they hit the places where lights and masks are and broke straight through it."
That's why I try to keep my seatbelt on at all times, ever since I went through some rough turbulences on my way to Dubai (layover)
On some routes you see lots of loose seatbelts (Middle East, Africa). On European flights, everyone has the seatbelt on for the entire flight.
Might not be great for my thumbs in that kind of situation though...
So it's a bit like "why don't people wear a welding mask while cooking?" It was never even a risk that I had considered before.
Look at that one for example, the few people who had belt will most likely be fine, on the other hand people without belts got thrown around like ragdolls and many died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldfgEJpIgKM&rco=1
I always find it amusing that the moment the seat-belts light goes off everyone unbuckles across the plane
I've been through some pretty heavy turbulence in my time, but thankfully nothing this severe. I've been through enough though to know that a lot of people don't take it very seriously. I've been on flights with screaming passengers, and _very_ quiet British Marines, both in reaction to some pretty nasty air, and I'm always surprised that turbulence surprises people. It's part of flying.
There's a reason why you're advised to keep your seatbelt fastened when seated. I simply don't understand some cabins that have cocktail bars in them - are you absolutely crazy? Air pockets are horrific, and there is nothing pilots can do to avoid unexpected ones. One minute you can be sipping your vodka martini, the next you can be thrown around to the point you're hitting the ceiling and then the floor within a couple of seconds of each other, and hard, hard enough to kill you.
Even on transatlantic flights (LHR to SFO or LAX is normal for me), I'm only getting out of my seat if I absolutely 100% have to go to the bathroom, and then I'm going to reduce time not buckled in to absolute minimum.
Has anyone else experienced this or is my memory just faulty?
This is bad journalism.
https://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~williams/publications/2017GL0...
Speaking of the physics involved, I was thinking: if it's just free fall, caused by gravity and no air sustaining the wings, this should not happen, right? Some random Quora answer says that it's because during turbulence there is actually air pressing wings down and accelerating them down faster than gravity, and that's why you hit the ceiling. Intuitively that makes sense but, can anyone confirm?
Edit: because if it was just free-falling you should be in a micro-gravity environment
One second of higher-g: you compensate and your legs push harder against the ground. One second of weightlessness: the extra force you were pushing against launches you up, you lose footing and tumble. One second of higher-g: your flailing body is thrown against the ground from the average height of a few feet times the increased gravity. Ow.
Think of the air like water. (Air has fluid dynamics.)If the water suddenly drops away from a boat, the boat isn’t going to magically hover above the water.
But when the aircraft regains lift, which can happen rapidly in turbulent conditions, you will accelerate downward relative to the cabin. And the plane is design-tested to something like 5G. It can hurt you very badly.
I don't think most people realise how violent turbulence can be or how badly things can go. In my last flight, someone on my row removed the seatbelt as soon the light went out and then when we landed, before we exited the runway. Like, why? If it bothers you that much, don't wear it too tight... but at least wear it.
For one, I never thought someone could die from turbulence (besides a medical condition such as heart risk).
At the same time, I'm sure certain falls/impacts are quite lethal even in very short distances.
Yet, i dont understand how turbulence makes a plane fall 6000 ft in 3min, unless the automated (turbulence?) avoidance system engaged and caused the injury in the 1st place. Yet, at the same time, the rate of descent may have been necessary to keep control of the plane.
So many questions
1. Was there any warning for the turbulence? A lot can be picked up by radar but not all and it depends on what equipment the airplane has although Singapore Airlines isn't known for skimping on equipment like that.
2. Was the seat belt sign on? Was the passenger wearing their seat belt?
Basically, was the airline at fault? Was the crew at fault? Was the pasesnger at fault? Or was it just an freak accident? This will take time to answer.
Is this actually impossible for some theoretical constraint or have we just not invested in the R&D?
https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Meeting%20Procee...
https://www.wired.com/story/boeing-jaxa-turbulence-lidar-las...
Of course if cost would be not an object we could detect these events. One possible solution would be to fly companion drones ahead of the jet. They could then detect CAT quite easily by just running into them. The spacing is critical with this scheme. If the probe drone is too far ahead you risk CAT developing between it and your plane. If it is too close you won't have enough warning time. If it is even closer you just rammed the drone and that can cause complications in itself.
Another possible option is to use laser backscatter. If you shine a laser forward from the airplane some of it bounces back from microparticles. If you measure the doppler shift of the light bounced back (probably with interferometry) you can tell the projected component of the relative speed of the particles. There is a ton of complications with this. But in theory you could make a "lidar" kind of thing which scans forward from the airplane and measure CATs directly.
Here is a paper from NASA about this possibility from 1968: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80667132.pdf
> the London-Singapore flight suffered a sudden drop as a meal service was under way.
Meal service is probably the single most vulnerable moment to encounter turbulence. How many of the safety-first-at-all-times brigade could dine while tightly strapped to their seat? And no matter how tightly strapped in you are, you could not avoid being splashed by scalding coffee, as some passengers on the in the report were.
Also, the flight time from London to Singapore is 13 hours and 15 minutes (non-stop). How many of you would stay tightly strapped in at all times for that long?
Besides, I do a 12h route at least once a year, and yes I always have them on unless I'm stretching my legs or going to the toilet because that's the safety recommendation—not because I like it—I don't get your point.
I tend to keep my seat belt fairly loosly fastened throughout the flight. At least once I've experienced bad turbulence around where this flight had it - enough to make me hold tightly onto things and for service to be stopped. Usually I need a few trips to the bathroom during the flight though and if nothing else, a chance to stretch my legs (20 hours on planes in 24 hours means walking around is important).
Be interesting to see if anything is different on board (either with crew or fellow pax). RIP to the guy who died.
EDIT: It's suggested on aviation forums that unbelted passengers hitting the interior broke the plastic retaining clips holding interior panels, leading to dangling debris.
I know it's not supposed to happen, but there's a slight chance....
In the grand scheme of things, this sounds like a fair punishment for humanity.
Tbh, I do try to keep mine fastened, but generally don’t go anywhere, so as to maximize my safety.
The answer is that you're far more likely to choke on an olive at the bar than die due to turbulence.
Because that's what happened on my last flight. I didn't panic, I just felt sick.
There are reasonable measures those around you can take to ensure that falling objects don't crash into you from the sky, or that the bridge you're on does not collapse as you're driving over it. The risk is mitigated by reducing likelihood and impact.
There is nothing a pilot can do to avoid an air pocket. There is little mitigation possible.
Using PPE is not about living in fear, it's about taking appropriate precautions.
Of course not, because all of those scenarios are extremely high effort for low reward.
Wearing a seatbelt on an airplane is very low effort and takes a few seconds at most.
Your examples are in no way comparable to putting on a seatbelt.
This is the type of fallacious thinking that gets people in trouble: Instead of discussing the issue at hand, they try to substitute a ridiculous, exaggerated alternative scenario and argue against that instead.
You don't have to look very deep to see why your example scenarios, which take enormous amounts of time and effort, are pure strawman arguments in the context of a simple discussion about seatbelts.
There's a second fallacy wherein people try to argue an "all or nothing" perspective: They list out exaggerated things that they can't/won't do (like looking in the sky all the time) and then try to make the claim that because they can't do all of those exaggerated things, they shouldn't be expected to do any safety-related thing. It's another fallacious argument tactic.
I don't fear death, for I will be dead. I fear unexpected inconvenience
My guess is lethal turbulence is so rare, and things like deep-vein thrombosis are so common compare to that rarity, that it's not even close.
No, just not pusillanimous about it, given the odds.
I suspect those would be… unpopular. At least some airlines banned hardcover books during takeoff and landing for a time.
Fascinating; an exemplar of both toxic masculinity and grandiloquence in a single word.
Wear your seatbelt, wear your seatbelt, wear your seatbelt.
They literally say that several times during pre-flight briefing video. That no-one pays attention to.
I'd place a wager most of the injuries on this flight were seated but unbelted people, and not those going to the toilet.
The risk mitigation technique for dealing with severe turbulence which frequently injures people, and only rarely kills people (thankfully), is to keep your seatbelt loosely fastened, and get out of your seat only when you need to.
The fact this is considered absurd by some replies here is a fascinating insight, TBH.
When crossing a road one has more input to judge the risk by looking in both directions, seeing potentially oncoming cars and estimating their speed.
In the plane you have no way as a passenger to know when it's more or less likely that turbulences are flown through or how heavy they would be.
Some First Class Suites cabins even have actual showers in them!
I believe even as late as 2007 or 2008, ATC was limited in the deviations it could do due to the track system still in use in certain areas. Once the ARTCC/TRACONs were updated, ATC in the US now has way more capability and capacity to re-route traffic around storms. I forget when the last ARTCC refresh/rebuild happened.
Some things never change, though. Front Range of Colorado on a summer afternoon? Gonna be at least a few bumps.
I'll always remember Luxair's tiny Bombardier DHC-8-400 [0], lot of turbulence on those every single time, I guess because they are so small compared to other planes. I had the impression that they could be easily thrown around in the sky, and don't get me started on the noise of those propellers! The combination of the two made it quite the experience.
[0]: https://airlinesfleet.com/luxair-fleet-bombardier-dash-8-q40...
When you are going over the alps, that extra altitude can really help.
Also I remember in the late 80s going right through a storm while in mid flight during a long flight. That hasn't happened to me in the last 15 years. And I flight around 8 times a year.
>> The study also highlighted a new product, a turbulence nowcast, that combines numerous data sources to produce forecasts that are updated every 15 minutes – providing air carriers, all users of the National Airspace System and the air traffic controllers who support them – timely and critical safety information about locations and severity of potential turbulence. The turbulence nowcast is not yet widely used so the NTSB recommended the FAA and the NWS work together to fully implement its adoption and use in the national airspace system.
My recollection of bad turbulence is that same as yours - a flight to Seattle in '98 was the last time I can remember bad turbulence.
Also, I recall worse turbulence over land and smoother over the ocean. I’m assuming that’s just random luck and not a real thing?
Going 100 miles out of your way for weather at a point that's 100 miles from the airport is a big diversion. Going 100 miles laterally out of your way at the midpoint of a 2500nm trip is about an 8 nm deviation (4nm out and 4nm back).
Luckily with better predictive modeling most flights can avoid these rough patches now. There’s even some apps you can download to see the turbulence forecasts and pilot report maps.
> Moderate turbulence increased by 37%, and light turbulence increased by 17% during this period. Other flight routes over the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the South Atlantic also significantly increased.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2023/11/20/more-cl...
So are we just avoiding the storms? Or are “clear air” turbulence situations decreasing?
That's because it didn't, and armchair experts are breathlessly reporting on a completely normal (if even a bit slow) descent from cruising altitude to a lower altitude as part of their arrival into Bangkok.
There is no such thing. Civilian airliners don't have any automatic avoidance systems - they can only notify the pilots when there's a windshear (drastic wind change), another plane very close by, terrain close by, etc. But it's only (very strong) warnings, and it's impossible to detect/predict turbulence.
There is “wind shear detection” but that relies on the planes weather radar detecting moving columns of water droplets.
https://icao.usmission.gov/air-carrier-turbulence-related-in...
>> The study also highlighted a new product, a turbulence nowcast, that combines numerous data sources to produce forecasts that are updated every 15 minutes – providing air carriers, all users of the National Airspace System and the air traffic controllers who support them – timely and critical safety information about locations and severity of potential turbulence. The turbulence nowcast is not yet widely used so the NTSB recommended the FAA and the NWS work together to fully implement its adoption and use in the national airspace system.
> Authorities in Bangkok reported a British citizen (73) on board died as result of a heart attack
Also reporting that
> a second person may have succumbed to the injuries in hospital.
Edit: nm, another post has it
However, I want to just stress: while there are some known poor conditions tech can help pilots avoid (for example, thunder storms - pilots avoid those clouds for good reason), there are many types of turbulence which can not be predicted or detected by ground or air based systems.
We are all individually responsible for our behaviour on the aircraft. Regardless of the seatbelt sign status, keep it fastened when seated. If it's lit, stay seated. If it isn't, minimise the time you're not seated. Yes, it's not great on long haul, but the difference between smooth air and being thrown around by an air pocket is seconds. This severity is thankfully very rare, but that doesn't mean any of us should not consider it a risk when deciding how to behave in a plane cabin.
In general this isn't how airline investigations actually work. They instead use the concept of "just cause" meaning that the assumption is that the system failed, and that any mistake is the child of many parents, none whom are at fault on their own. This is why flying is so safe, no one in the entire system is afraid to report failures or mistakes because the assumption is to get better, not to punish why something is bad.
There may be a single final failure but why did was the system set up to allow that to happen at all in the first place is the question. In this case there will certainly be investigations at every level from the flight crew and cabin crew training, to their sleep schedule, to the forecasts, to the flight path planning, to the policies around passengers moving around the cabin, to even how the plane was balanced on passenger and cargo loading. There's going to be a combination of factors no doubt, but no one's going to get fired (some individuals may resign or retire from the stress of handling such a situation, which no one would fault them for). Singapore just got voted the #1 airline in the world, they will take this as seriously as if the entire plane went down.
These findings will then be applied to every major airline and aircraft in the world so that it never happens again. With a few very public recent incidents, any specific type of airline accident tends to happen only once.
"The TSIB is the air, marine and rail accidents and incidents investigation authority in Singapore. Its mission is to promote transport safety through the conduct of independent investigations into air, marine and rail accidents and incidents.
The sole objective of TSIB’s safety investigations is the prevention of transport accidents and incidents. The safety investigations do not seek to apportion blame or liability. Accordingly, TSIB reports should not be used to assign blame or determine liability."
And:
"The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident under these Regulations is the prevention of future accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of such an investigation to apportion blame or liability.
Accordingly, it is inappropriate that [UK] AAIB reports should be used to assign fault or blame or determine liability, since neither the investigation nor the reporting process has been undertaken for that purpose."
Apportioning blame is how you lose transparency in air accident investigations.
1. No, in most cases it is CAT (clear air turbulence). CB turbulence is easily detected by radar and avoided; CAT doesn't show on radar as there are no clouds involved.
2. No, since it comes without a warning. I mean there are forecasts of CAT, and you also hear what other aircraft report (the ATC takes that into account too), but every now and then someone has to be the first to enter some more shaky air.
Also, in most cases this is at best moderate turbulence (meaning it doesn't really affect the handling of the plane), but that is enough to temporarily get from 1g to 0g or below, and make some passenger fly up in the cabin, then fall down.
A ceiling that buckles when a human slams into it at an acceleration of -4g or more is a ceiling that doesn't severely fracture their skull and possibly kill them instantly.
If you have any stories about people that died on an airplane more than once, do tell :)
I always thought there were relatively few people with this mentality, that a simple and trivial precaution is totally unacceptable and infringes on their entire life. Then COVID hit and we all saw just how many people would not even lift a pinky finger to help mitigate risk for themselves and others. I don't understand it, either. Do y'all just go out and jump off cliffs every day because you're free to do it?
I fly a lot on routes over the tropics and have experienced serious turbulence multiple times. There's no way I will be wandering around the cabin unnecessarily.
This may just be me becoming more aware of it, but, if so, I'm also becoming more aware of more passengers actually heeding the advice. I remember, not that long ago, most people removing their seatbelts as soon as the light went out. Not so common now.
It makes you wonder why they ever even turn off the seatbelt light. Just keep it on the whole time, just like the equally anachronistic no-smoking light.
I feel like the light is just there to mollify the older generations who didn't grow up with mandatory seat belts wearing in cars, fought those laws loudly, and are still bitter that the government makes them take a sensible safety precaution. Are there enough of those people still flying that it makes sense to keep that light in use?
To tell you when it's relatively safe/not so safe to use the bathroom.
There are entire states in the US that take that approach. Live free or die and all that.
So free.
A -2.5G event "pulls" you upward 1.5x harder than falling and you absolutely can die from falling down due to head injury - it happens all the time. In reality it doesn't pull, your inertia simply wants to keep you moving as you were so the top of the fuselage "falls" faster than gravity until it connects with your body and is able to transmit that force to counter your inertia. A better way to transmit that force is a seat belt.
This is exactly the same situation as a car hitting a wall and why you need a seat belt in that scenario too. You and the car are moving forward. The car decelerates. When it does so faster than the friction of you in the seat your inertia carries your body forward. The faster the car stops the more energy you have to impact the windshield/steering wheel/etc. The seat belt functions to transmit the force between your body and the car.
That is not correct. The airplane experiences this uniformly because the wings transmit the forces to the fuselage. But the contents of the aircraft follow Sir Issac Newton and want to continue their previous motion. If the aircraft experiences high enough negative G then anything not strapped down will appear to rise relative to the fuselage.
To put it another way: you need a physical connection (eg seatbelt or cargo strap) to transmit the force in such an event, just as the fuselage needs a connection to the wings to transmit the force.
It is not purely a reduction in lift causing the aircraft to begin free falling.
Different air masses can move in different directions, including downwards or in a circular motion. When the velocity of the air is high enough it can easily push the airplane down faster than free-fall otherwise would.
Granted they were technically falling, too, but at a slower rate because the force that pushed the plane down - turbulence - acted directly on the plane, but the plane shielded the passengers from the direct effect of the turbulence. Thus the air did not push them down at the same rate that it pushed the plane down onto them.
EDIT: to clarify, my initial doubt/question was about what actually is the cause for the force that, during a turbulence, makes the plane fall at >1G and thus making you hit the ceiling if you are not tied to the seat?
Entropy causing gasses to mix evenly is true... on a large enough timescale.
In reality any gas or fluid will form boundary layers between masses of the substance having different temperatures, moving at different speeds, or having other properties (eg salinity for a liquid).
When flying you can end up passing through these discontinuities - regions where the air is very turbulent on both sides of the boundary. You can also develop different amounts of lift in one air mass vs another due to density. The entire air mass itself may be moving in a different direction and/or at a different velocity on one side of the boundary vs the other.
In a small airplane the effect is more pronounced. On a bright sunny day near the ground I get negative G when passing over a small bit of water followed by positive G when passing over a hot parking lot. It is very obvious where there is a region of hotter less dense air rising vs cooler more humid air.
Questions:
Is this still about risk mitigation? If yes, are you at risk now? Why don't you wear your bike helmet at work all day? (never know when a ceiling tile could fall down)
Would your opinion change following this hypothetical media blitz? Would you hop on the bandwagon and decry the irresponsibility of the anti-helmet folks?
If you think about this for a second before hitting that downwards pointing triangle, does this dumb example mean that it's actually more about what's socially acceptable than actual safety? Why would you feel dumb wearing a helmet all day now, and dumb for not wearing it in that world?
Yes, death by turbulence is rare, but there are dozens of serious injuries a year caused by turbulence in US air space alone. Hundreds a year, globally. We're not talking about a small graze or cut, we're talking head injuries, broken bones, life changing injuries. Costs US airlines half a billion dollars a year dealing with it in terms of payouts and maintenance costs. Why you think that doesn't apply to you is a strange take to me, but you do you.
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here or what you’re suggesting we should do
In a hypothetical case where a seatbelt cost an extra $100 to use, then the cost would probably not be worth the benefit.
Cars that can only be driven by computers in controlled conditions defeat most of the point of having cars (i.e., mobility for people unable to use public transport).
Cattling statistics like this is silly.
If you showed fat people images of obesity and said that they'd be healthier if they lost their weight, you would also cattle the statistics and look at how many fat people decided to suicide versus how many took the advice (or didn't)? What a dumb way to construct advice.
Which ones? Rust belt? Flyover zone (or some such term)?
Would love an explanation of how you got here
> Destitute of a manly or courageous strength and firmness of mind
Not much of a leap.
The etymology is latin for "small (pussilus) spirit/courage (animus)" meaning "faint of heart".
Or perhaps you also think only men are brave enough to go to airplane bars (or to untie their belt or stand from their seat during a flight even when it's not "absolutely necessary"?)
> Destitute of a manly or courageous strength and firmness of mind; of weak spirit; mean-spirited; spiritless; cowardly; -- said of persons,
“Destitute of a manly spirit” implies that there is such a thing as a manly spirit one can be more or less possessed of… that falls well and truly under the scope of the meaning of toxic masculinity.
And perhaps you, for some reason, think that women aren’t perfectly able to engage in toxic masculinity?
Either way, I only use the term where and when appropriate.
Data on olives/airline bars is inconclusive
Of course they don't always get it right both ways: Sometimes reports of turbulence ahead turn out to be false positives, and at other times, strong turbulence can happen without any warning.
Your kitchen does not have staff telling you to make sure you are wearing a welding mask. It may also lack appropriate indicator lamps that tell you when it is a good time to wear your welding mask. It is also not standard practice in all kitchens.
It’s actually not like airplane seatbelts at all, where they are ubiquitous and the risks of not wearing them are fairly well-documented.
I didn’t have any headphones on. At first it felt a little bit overboard, but with events like this turbulence happening, I can see the need for it.
The advice to wear your seat belt throughout the flight are hardly clear and emphatic. They often make it sound like something they have to say to cover their asses. There's certainly no clear comms around the risk of death and serious injury.
I have no idea in this case whether the indicators went on in time but I obviously wasn't arguing in favour of ignoring those.
> the risks of not wearing them are fairly well-documented.
Where? Where would I have seen this documentation? I'm 53 and I have no recollection of stumbling across it.
(also - please reconsider your tone next time. It feels like you're trying to get me riled up)
Seat belts in cars also contain several CYA-grade chimes and buzzers. The owner manual may mention risk of injury or death. Likely an airline's contract of carriage contains the same. I suspect both are read as often and as eagerly by their users.
I think the multiple "off tone" messages you're getting are in response to your use of ignorance as a defense for ignoring airplane crew instructions.
I can't remember the last time I was on a plane where they didn't recommend keeping a seatbelt on at all times.
Here is the BA brief saying to do just that time 1:55: https://youtu.be/gBGbDQbwzWU?si=5KS4LTEcDmtQKJH_
Here is the United one where they mention it at 0:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2LSKVAH4WA
I can't imagine anything more clear than starting the seatbelt briefing: "It is important to have your safety belt on at all times"
They end it with: "In case of unexpected turbulence keep your seatbelt fastened, even when the seatbelt sign is off."
Its literally the first and last things that United tells you about your seatbelt.
> Where? Where would I have seen this documentation? I'm 53 and I have no recollection of stumbling across it.
Besides the bright "buckle your belt" sign in front of you and the little leaflet that says "buckle your belt" at arms reach ?
https://www.travelandleisure.com/thmb/K-qKcdwWTPYlcarQsYPkR3...
I just always wear my seatbelt per the flight attendants' instructions, "keep your seatbelts fastened while seated" is a recommendation in every flight I've ever taken in my life.
(Because instead of implying that the safety device is absurd, it implies that some people ignore the obvious)
The belt doesn't need to be on tight, but it should be relatively snug.
It's just one of those things that is trivial to do, with a very, very low probability to save you from injury, but costs nothing, so why not...
It’s not uncommon to see a parent riding around with a kid attached to the bike and neither are wearing a helmet.
I think it is kind of a cultural thing as well as convenience. If you ride a bike to the station to catch a train, then you might need storage or to carry it with you.
The bicycle seats for kids are designed in such a way that the only real danger of a head being hit is in the frontal collision, or in a really forceful side one. The design of Dutch streets makes the chance of either happening small enough that the helmets are widely seen as not worth it.
Part of the reason is that because bike usage is so common and the infrastructure is very separate (bike lanes everywhere, no mixed traffic on eg roundabouts), and bikes almost always have right of way and are not to blame in an accident, that drivers are very aware of them. I noticed in countries like Ireland with much less bikes that bike lanes sometimes just end in the middle of a high speed roundabout. And most drivers there have no clue which is in part because until 10 years ago you could just buy a driver's license at the post office. It was a "learner's permit" but it was normal practice to just go and drive.
So yeah in Ireland I wouldn't even ride a bike with a helmet. In Holland I'm much safer even without one.
Whereas you’d be someone with a death wish to be riding without a helmet in most places in the US.
I've met people who actually and rationally consider all the potential risks and I respect them. It's also an exhausting life to lead from my observation.
I do wear a seatbelt when in seat, though more out of fear than expectation something like that will ever happen. It just seems like an incredibly stupid way to die, and mitigating it costs me nothing.
Fear and greed drive markets - Anon.
And humans - Me.
Ah ok, as I suspected a covid authoritarian that’s deluded and ruthlessly mocking ANY recognition of cost in the cost-benefit analysis of safety measures, meanwhile overestimating the benefit all together.
in the flight case, it could very well be that if you were able to count, there's more harm from DVT from sitting in a seat all flight, versus getting up to walk around regularly and potentially being hurt by turbulence
just a cursory search shows ~300 serious injuries in 30 years tracked by the FAA
> The model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets. Or they can be caused by people's attitudes to difference, like assuming disabled people can't do certain things.
in areas without usable public transport, everyone has this "disability". Individual action can't make public transport magically appear: only policy changes can do that. (Or anarchically setting up your own public transport, I suppose, but that'll probably get you arrested in America.)
- Planes fly through the atmosphere in varying conditions. - The conditions that lead to uncomfortable or dangerous turbulence are not at all uncommon. - These conditions are unpredictable and have little warning. - Wearing a seatbelt is a very minor inconvenience, and will protect me from the worst of the harms that can come from common turbulence. - I will wear a seatbelt.
This doesn't seem complex.
The argument about bike helmets, although nuanced, should have nothing to do with celebrities wearing them or not.
Sometimes zero warning, and major harm, as in the current case.
Not true at all. The vast vast majority of turbulence incidents are very well predictable. It's not 1930 anymore.
> - The conditions that lead to uncomfortable or dangerous turbulence are not at all uncommon.
Except your flawed logic in the previous point flows to this point. The question isn't turbulence but unpredictable severe turbulence which is much rarer. About 1 per million flights I think which is far from common.
> A smart, independently minded person, would do the following risk analysis:
Given the flaws in the risks analysis I find this sentence hilarious.
On the large scale, yes, on the scale that causes a plane to drop a meter at very short notice, no they aren't. If they were, I wouldn't have been in planes that dropped a meter without any warning. Your "1 per million flights" is probably based on statistics relating to reported injury (correct me if I'm wrong). Those statistics would be skewed by many factors, not least people wearing seatbelts.
I've flown probably around a few hundred times. I've experienced uncomfortable (spilt drinks, rollercoaster feelings) probably about ten times. I've had actual dangerous turbulence (both times, as you say, with warning) twice. Once into Frankfurt, once into Singapore.
On a couple of flights the turbulence warning from the flight crew has come through after the initial experience of turbulence.
I'm not saying we're not good at detecting it, and I'm not saying it's super common, but your one in a million number is wishful thinking.
By the way, I actually love flying, and I still regard it as an incredibly safe way to travel, but wearing a seatbelt is still a good idea.
this risk calculation is messy of course, as we all have different tolerances for inconvenience and risk, and we also have different responses to individual vs. collective risks.
I've definitely noticed a proliferation of warning notices and signs in the US (and I don't just mean the Californian chemical hazard warnings in the most bizarre/unavoidable locations like a jet bridge), with the really important ones usually reiterated by a human standing next to them, continuously shouting the same instruction, apparently because people don't seem to take them seriously otherwise.
It’s not that hard to follow instructions. There aren’t that many, and almost all flights have the exact same ones. If you don’t want to learn about getting tossed around like a rag doll at 40k feet that’s fine, just do what the crew tells you to do and you’ll be ok.
It’s not like the pilots can see a giant messy region of air up ahead. Sometimes they’ll know the flight overall will be rough and can warn you but generally most times they tell you to fasten your seat belts some turbulence has already happened.
A plane the other day dove suddenly out of nowhere. Less recently a door plug blew off a plane and nobody was sucked out thanks to seatbelts. Before that, a flight departing Hawaii fell a few hundred feet without warning shortly after takeoff. These all happened very publicly and with widespread media coverage.
Frankly, if you fly a few times a year and never wear your belt you’ll probably be fine. But it takes zero effort and doesn’t need to be strapped particularly tight to be effective. There’s essentially zero reason not to wear it and it can save your life.
Sometimes you just have to use a little of your own intelligence.
There's some weird disconnect in this thread. People seem to be completely misinterpreting me at every step.
But to play your game, Switzerland and Italy, especially southern Italy, are very different.
I mean, Europe had an iron curtain for decades and that shows at the boundaries.
If you're harness is loose, or your line is slack without an energy absorber, it'll break your back when you fall!
I don't see any interpretation of that that makes it true.
A belt simply takes that force and redistributes it into the seat frame, if the belt is not worn the force is not redistributed by the belt but rather by your head into the overhead bin
More precisely, while I am falling, my velocity and consequently my momentum relative to the Earth steadily increases, which is analogous to debt because I will eventually need to restore the situation in which my momentum relative to the Earth is zero (because that is how people live their lives: at rest relative to the surface of the Earth rather than for example in orbit).
In the same way, the passenger in the airplane must eventually go back to being at rest relative to the airplane, but if the seat belt is very loose, "debt" (momentum relative to the airliner) can be accumulated before all the slack has been taken out of the seat belt.
Yes, the total amount of impulse (change in momentum caused by the environment's pushing on the person) integrated over time is the same regardless of how tight the seat belt is, but it matters whether that impulse is spread out over time or comes in one big jolt.
Turbulence due to weather is what you are talking about.
Unless I come from an alternate universe - most people wear their seatbelt during take-off and landing and when the seatbelt light comes on.
I wear mine through most of the flight but I only started doing this fairly recently because I learned more about turbulence.
I'm not defending ignorance at all. I'm simply describing how poorly the risks are communicated and the reality that most people I've observed don't wear seatbelts for the entire duration of a flight unless the warning light comes on.
At some level, take their mandated-by-regulations word for it? -- these regs are written in blood, and they say to buckle your belt, not only when the sign is lighted, but also any time when seated at your seat.
Boeing has done a good job of reminding us of some non-turbulence reasons to buckle up. You might also get sucked out of an unsecured exit door plug on a 737. :) I haven't heard that one mentioned in a safety brief yet.
In the pilot circles I frequent, the joke about seatbelts is that it helps accident investigators more easily count the deceased among the wreckage. So there's some YOLO fuel for your next trip. This was a freak occurrence. It's sad and it sucks. The injuries to passengers were likely preventable -- less so the cabin crew. New word is that the fatality was a cardiac event -- no belt buckle helps anyone there.
In this case, a seat belt would have likely saved the person - heavily injuring yourself is quite traumatic (tautologically) which increases the risk of cardiac events. In any case, injuries due to turbulence are extremely common as far as injuries in airliners go.
I mean, I don’t really know how to say it without sounding like a git. This is simply what you do. What “everyone” does, for a loose definition of everyone. The “everyone” that wears seatbelts in a car, for example.
Genuine question: you know you should wear seatbelts if traveling in the rear seats of a car as well, yes ?
And I religiously wear one in a car - just like any sane person.
I'm really sorry not to be the strawman that people in this thread seem to be craving.
And going back to the original intent: would you say driving in Zurich and driving in Naples are two distinct experiences?
The ground opposes the force produced by gravity, there is no accumulation of anything. Gravity accelerates mass when it is pulling it in motion unless there is an equal and opposite force which is the normal force exerted by the ground (or airplane)
Why would the FAA and other aviation regulatory agencies care about your phone bill?
The motivation is supposedly cellphones at high altitudes interfering with far-away cell towers that are reusing the same frequency at a distance that would normally make interference very unlikely, given the radio horizon and everything.
I highly doubt that that would still be an issue modern networks couldn't handle (also given that most other countries don't have a corresponding law on their books, as far as I know), yet here we are.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/22.925
[2] https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...
> cents-per-megabyte isn't unheard of.
If only! Double-digit dollars per 100 kilobyte aren't unheard of.
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