How climate change impacts flight turbulence
Passengers on an Air Canada flight experienced turbulence on Friday that was severe enough to send their meals flying off tray tables and into the air, leaving the cabin of the aircraft looking like the scene of mid-air food fight.
According to a reddit post from Morrell Andrews, a few hours into the flight from Vancouver to Singapore, Flight AC19 hit “some major bumps and everything went flying (including a few people!).” Andrews said nobody was hurt, but his photos show food in the aisle and splattered all over the ceiling of the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.
Air Canada told CBS News the flight encountered “some turbulence” about three hours after it left Vancouver on Oct. 11. The airline confirmed that none of the passengers or crew members were injured and the flight continued on to Singapore as scheduled.
On the reddit thread, another passenger said they were “terrified” and had “never had turbulence like that before.”
“It felt like one of those roller coasters where you have several seconds of weightlessness,” another poster said on the forum, adding that they had to pick food from their hair. “The cabin was full of floating food! I had coffee dripping on me from the ceiling and was picking rice out of my hair afterwards.”
Several severe turbulence incidents have made headlines in recent years, including in May when Singapore Airlines said a flight from Bangkok, Thailand had “encountered sudden extreme turbulence” on the way to London’s Heathrow Airport. One man died of a heart attack and dozens were injured.
Data from the online flight tracking organization FlightAware showed the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 had dropped some 6,000 feet in only about five minutes during the incident. Thunderstorms were reported in the area.
In September 2023, a Jet Blue flight from Ecuador to Fort Lauderdale hit severe turbulence, sending eight passengers to the hospital.
“Severe weather increases chances of turbulence, and due to climate change, these kinds of incidents will only continue to grow,” Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, told CBS News in 2022.
A phenomena known as clear-air turbulence — which can’t be detected by radar — is increasing along with the more typical severe weather-related bumps in the air.
As the jet stream shifts and carbon dioxide emissions make the air warmer across the planet, there’s more wind shear at the elevations where commercial jets typically cruise. One 2023 study found that moderate clear-air turbulence had increased 37% between 1979-2020. Researchers found severe clear-air turbulence had increased 55% on one of the world’s most popular travel routes, over the North Atlantic, over the same time period.
Emily Mae Czachor, Gina Martinez, Erielle Delzer and Tucker Reals contributed to this report.