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FOX Weather addresses fears over turbulence in new documentary
FOX Weather’s Jason Frazer spoke with LiveNOW from FOX’s Josh Breslow about how a new special hopes to help calm fears over turbulence on an airplane.
A Qatar Airways flight hit turbulence Sunday, injuring 12 people while en route from Doha to Dublin.
According to The Associated Press, eight of the 12 people hurt were sent to a hospital.
Dublin Airport told the AP that it was flight QR017, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Emergency services were waiting for the aircraft’s arrival, “due to six passengers and six crew … reporting injuries after the aircraft experienced turbulence while airborne over Turkey.”
“A small number of passengers and crew sustained minor injuries in flight and are now receiving medical attention,” Qatar Airways said in a statement.
“The matter is now subject to an internal investigation,” the statement continued.
FILE: Qatar Airways flight from Doha (Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images)
Turbulence injuries on the rise
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), turbulence is created by atmospheric pressure, jet streams, air around mountains, cold or warm weather fronts or thunderstorms.
It could be “as insignificant as a few annoying bumps” but it can also “momentarily throw an airplane out of control or to cause structural damage,” according to Weather.gov.
While turbulence-related fatalities are rare, injuries have piled up over the years.
RELATED: These are the flight routes with the most turbulence
Some meteorologists and aviation analysts note that reports of turbulence encounters also have been increasing and point to the potential impacts that climate change may have on flying conditions.
On May 20, one man died of a heart attack and dozens of others were injured when a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore hit severe turbulence. Data from the website FlightAware shows the aircraft quickly lost several thousand feet of altitude after traveling at 37,000 feet.
Flight routes with the most turbulence
Turbli analyzed 150,000 routes to determine those with the most turbulence.
The most turbulent flight was the route from Santiago in Chile to Santa Cruz in Bolivia, according to the data. Meanwhile, the second most turbulent route was determined to be between Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, followed by Lanzhou, the capital city of northwest China’s Gansu province, and Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province.
The Associated Press and FOX Business contributed to this report.
