Last Tuesday, Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 from London to Singapore experienced severe turbulence. 54 people were injured, some seriously, and a 73-year-old Briton died on board, presumably of a heart attack. The interim report from the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau now reveals in detail what happened on board the plane.

Ten days after the horror flight, 28 passengers are still in hospital. Some of them were admitted with brain injuries, others with spinal injuries after the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 encountered severe turbulence on May 21 and was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Bangkok.

It was also a terrible event for the airline. It was the first fatal incident in 24 years. A 73-year-old British passenger died on board, presumably of a heart attack. Uninjured passengers had already reported how bad the turbulence was after landing. But now the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB), Singapore’s accident investigation authority, has presented the first interim report on flight SQ321 – and it backs up what happened with data.

The Boeing 777-300 ER, which had taken off from London Heathrow the evening before, was just south of the coast of Burma at an altitude of 12,780 meters (37,000 feet) on the morning of May 21 when it first began to shake for 19 seconds. The reason was developing storm clouds. At the same time, the aircraft began to climb by around 362 feet or 110 meters – without any action from the crew. “In response to this uncontrolled increase in altitude, the autopilot tilted the aircraft downward to descend to the selected altitude of 37,000 feet,” writes the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau.

In addition to the uncontrolled climb, the pilots also observed an uncontrolled increase in speed, according to the authority. They responded by extending the air brakes. One pilot then said that the seatbelt signs had been activated. The unintentional climb and acceleration were “most likely due to the fact that the aircraft was exposed to an updraft,” according to the experts.

And a few seconds later it continued. Within 0.6 seconds the vertical acceleration changed rapidly. First, forces of plus 1.35 G and then forces of minus 1.5 G acted on the occupants of the Boeing 777. This probably led to people who were not wearing seat belts flying into the air, writes the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau. And immediately afterwards the opposite happened.

Now reversed forces were applied for four seconds. The acceleration was reduced from minus 1.5 to plus 1.5 G. This caused the passengers and crew members who had previously been lifted to fall back to the ground. This is probably what caused the injuries, according to the experts from Singapore.

But even for those who were not injured, these 4.6 seconds were unpleasant. The positive G-forces experienced by the passengers of flight SQ321 are roughly equivalent to those experienced by a Formula 1 driver during takeoff and the maximum range permitted for passenger aircraft. However, negative accelerations lead to “blood flow to the head” and are “significantly harder for humans to tolerate,” writes Klaus Hannemann from the German Aerospace Center DLR in a specialist article. Even small excesses of the minus 1 G mark are “perceived as very unpleasant and, in some cases, even painful due to a feeling of pressure in the head and eyes.”

Even though the passengers probably felt like their plane had really dropped during that time, the rapid changes in acceleration in the 4.6 seconds only resulted in a loss of altitude of 178 feet or 54 meters. The pilots briefly took manual control during the turbulence before reaching calmer areas and switching the autopilot back on. After the cabin crew had informed them, they decided to land in Bangkok, where rescue teams were waiting.

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The original of this article “Now report reveals what happened on Singapore Airlines horror flight” comes from aeroTelegraph.