Airline passengers could be in for a rougher ride, thanks to climate change
Scott Neuman, NPRApril 6, 2023 4:00 AM
In March, Ingrid Weisse, her husband and two young sons were aboard Alaska Airlines 889 from Portland, Ore., on a flight home to Hawaii when the Boeing 737 began buffeting so fiercely that it felt as if the plane would shake itself apart.
"It got really, really violent," says Weisse. There was lots of screaming in the cabin. A flight attendant was hit by an ice bucket that became a projectile. So many people got sick from the sudden changes in altitude that flight attendants had to hand out more vomit bags, she says. Midway through the approximately 45-minute ordeal, one frightened passenger yelled out, "Please tell us this is normal!"
For Weisse and her family — all frequent flyers — it was like nothing they had ever experienced. Clearly the passengers aboard their flight were rattled, but so were the flight attendants. Before disembarking in Honolulu, one of them confided to Weisse that it was the worst turbulence she'd seen in 23 years on the job.
There are different kinds of turbulence, and it's hard to pinpoint what caused the extreme conditions that rocked Weisse's flight. In an email, Alaska Airlines acknowledged "unexpected turbulence" on the flight. But researchers say there's evidence that a particularly unpredictable type known as "clear-air turbulence" is becoming more frequent, says Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England.
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https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/05/04/turbulence-on-airplanes-is-increasing-its-because-of-climate-change-nbc-npr-say/
