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One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

bbc.com

281–290 of 338 posts

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably would result in less people flying, more people driving, resulting in more deaths overall.

I don't understand this weird line of thinking. Don't do positive X because some people might respond to it in a weird way and do neutral Y. 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)? Wh…

I mean if it caused a spike of suicides, I’d find a new message.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#282
post #61

> "So I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling," 28-year-old student Dzafran Azmir said. > "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…

I recall a very specific emirates turbulence experience which was hours of relatively mild medium bumps over Iran. The bumps weren’t as notable as much as the duration was. Seatbelts always for me too!

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#283
post #259
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but what's the point? If the belt is on very loose, you give your body a chance to gain momentum, which will be redirected when the seat belt catches you, which would lead to serious injury. 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...

You're going to the very extreme end of what he meant by "loose"...

I'm going by the levels of "loose" I regularly see on flights. I regularly see seat belts buckled, effectively fully slacked. It's not everyone, but probably 5%.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#284
post #82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup... I still don't understand why people decide to not put on their seatbelt while being seated. It's not like you have a lot more freedom of movement without the seatbelt? And it might just save your life in events like this one.

I've never seen turbulence like this. And until fairly recently I didn't know it was really possible. 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.

When you're cooking, you're not thousands of feet in the air in tight quarters traveling hundreds of miles per hour through the atmosphere in a however many ton vessel filled with flammable fuel.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#285
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is driving actually kind of easy in Japan for this reason? I’ve never had a car while there. It’s wild how different Japan and China are despite being neighbors. I can’t think of a European neighbor pair that is so different.

One is an island nation that's been fairly open, the other had waves of isolationism, famines, and only recently opened up their markets in the late 80s. Private car ownership was not on the table until probably 25 years ago. But to play your game, Switzerland and Italy, especially southern Italy, are very different.

Your counterexample is not even close to being accurate. Italy and Switzerland have much more in common than China and Japan. Italian is even one of the official languages of Switzerland. Switzerland and Italy are both essentially federations of distinct provinces. Both are recognizably Western European. China and Japan are worlds apart, as are China and India.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#286
For all the pontificating in this thread about the need to follow safety advice regarding the wearing of seat belts (and bicycle helmets!) at all times, please note the following from the BBC report:

> 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?

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#287
post #190

“A September 2022 study predicts that clear-air turbulence will increase significantly around the globe by the period 2050-2080, in particular along the busiest flight routes, and the strongest type of turbulence will increase the most.” https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/21/world/singapore-airlines-...

Why didn't they reference the study by title and author names? Who conducted the study? How can we fact check it? This is bad journalism.

It's in the first link where it connects to NCAR and Dr. Paul Williams;

https://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~williams/publications/2017GL0...

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#288
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By looking both ways and therefore mitigating the risk through reducing the likelihood of being killed while crossing the road by oncoming traffic. 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 so…

Do you compare the risk of sitting still during a long-haul flight and possibly developing a DVT to the risk of being killed by turbulence? I would argue that moving around on the plane actually reduces your chance of dying, as it lowers the very real risk of a DVT-related stroke or pulmonary embolism while keeping the risk of dying in strong turbulence still extremely low.

There are simple exercises that you can do while seated to avoid DVT. Just wriggling your toes help a lot, or flexing the muscles in your legs.

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.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Dutch people don’t wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. As e-bikes are becoming more popular, some older people are opting to wear a helmet since the speed is higher, but many still don’t. 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 trai…

Also it's just not really a big danger. There's no epidemic of brain injury due to this. 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 bike…

I don't remember the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube video, but he specifically discusses the relatively low rates of bicycle helmet wearing, especially amoungst urban riders. I agree with you: When there are serious bike injuries, it is usually due to a car or truck in mixed space. When only bikes riding less than 25km/h, the injuries are pretty minor.

Re: One dead as London-Singapore flight hit by turbulence

#290
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Dutch people don’t wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. As e-bikes are becoming more popular, some older people are opting to wear a helmet since the speed is higher, but many still don’t. 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 trai…

Pricesely this, yes. And for the kids, an average trip to school takes like 5-10 minutes, hassling with three helmets (mine and of two kids) takes almost as long. And then I have to carry three helmets if I want to drop by to the supermarket after getting them to school. 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 forc…

Why is this downvoted? Please explain. It seems like a reasonable comment to me.
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