It was a swelteringly hot afternoon in south-west Myanmar on 21 May 2024. Tropical thunderstorms, showers and highs of 36C were forecast for the area around the Irrawaddy Basin. High above, monsoonal heat and humidity were building into a vast convective column of water vapour, a towering cumulonimbus cloud soaring up to 35,000ft (more than 10,500 metres) into the air.
From the ground, it would have looked like something from a children’s picture book – a soft, fluffy white mass. But for Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 passing just above, it was anything but benign. In the cabin of the Boeing 777, passengers were being woken up for breakfast with three hours to go on the journey from London to Singapore.
For the 210 travellers on board, the past 10 hours had been uneventful. The seatbelt signs were off. Some were milling around, others were using the toilets, and cabin staff were preparing trolleys for service.
At 2.19pm and 23 seconds local time, moderate turbulence shook the plane for 17 seconds and the seatbelt sign was switched on. Then, as one passenger described it, it was “like a grenade had gone off”. In just 4.6 seconds, any passenger not strapped in hit the roof with 1.5 times the force of gravity and was thrown back on the floor in an instant.
Passengers reported hearing people screaming in agony, blood streaming down faces, with overhead panels broken by the force of bodies hitting them. One person was left dead and 79 were seriously injured. The turbulence had lasted just over 21 seconds.
While SQ321 was an extreme case that made global headlines, turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to passengers and crew in non-fatal accidents, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Figures from the Federal Aviation Administration record about a dozen serious injuries a year from turbulence across the US alone. It can be caused by a multitude of factors, including geographic features such as mountains – the top 10 most turbulent routes are all over either the Andes or the Himalayas.
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