BOH

I agree 100%, 1000ft is circa 300 metres. Not possible in around a second and the arresting of that fall at the bottom of it would break the airframe up instantly.

South London Bon Viveur

Would that be done by the auto-throttle or do the crew need to disengage the auto pilot and fly out of it?

JerseyPilot

Depends on the situation at the time. Generally speaking you’d try to leave the auto thrust and autopilot engaged, but it may not be appropriate. The aircraft might not give you a choice (and very likely didn’t in this case), I’ve had an autopilot disconnect on me flying through a cell at night that wasn’t painting anything on the weather radar with as little as 300 feet per minute rate of climb in turbulence. Remember the beancounters at the airlines are pushing hard for single pilot ops in the cruise so this event in the future could very likely have to be managed by someone up front on their own as the other pilot would have disappeared off to the bunk for their rest. It’s beyond farcical that there’s redundancy in basically every system on the aircraft but they want to take away the redundancy in the one controlling element that oversees the safety of all this.

lorcancoyle

What a thread to read before getting on BA16 tomorrow - guessing it’ll be a completely full flight now too!

Hope the crew members are on the mend. What is it with BA crew getting stuck in Singaporean hospital at this time of year (was MPox in 2022)

Waterhorse

Strap in tight!

Oxon Flyer

Looking at the FR24 track and the raw csv data file, there is a gap in the received data between 17:20 and 18:20, which corresponds to the 'speed' line on the graph being smooth rather than jiggly. The aircraft made the 180 degree turn in this period.

From this we could well assume that the speed line in this period is an interpretation, and not necessarily representative of what actually happened.

Waterhorse

One thing is for sure — in severe turbulence the speed line would not be smooth

medarchies

Terrible news. Hope all the crews and passengers are safe. I've been through a severe turbulence between LIM-SCL about 10 years ago. Bad memory.

jeremyBA

I had this once on a flight from Chang Mai to Bangkok.

the plane climbed pushing us into our seats and the lift then vanished.

They had just served the meal and everything hit the ceiling. I was covered in it and had no change of clothing for the flight back to the U.K.

We were near the back. My girlfriend at the time a a nurse. I calmed the crew ( they were very frightened and mostly minorly injured ) whilst she got the first aid kit out and patched them up.

About half an hour later an English captain came on ( it was Thai airways ) and said I gather it was a bit bumpy back there but we will be landing shortly. Master is understatement given the plane looked like a war zone.

it was not a pleasant flight !

BlackSkyuk

G-STBL is flying now under BAW12D back to LHR https://www.flightradar24.com/BAW12D/30c2bf42

LondonAussie

I've thankfully never been in anything I'd call severe, nothing that resulted in things hitting the ceiling or people being seriously hurt. I can recall a few times where people ended up with food and drinks in their laps.

However the things that stick in my mind most for one of them, many years later, are the captain's announcement that everything was under control and he'd be available after the flight if anyone wanted to speak to him about it, and how it also made lots of strangers start talking to each other for the rest of the flight, and disembarking was calm instead of the usual panicked rush to get up as soon as we reach the gate.

corporate-wage-slave

Here are some pretty frightening first person reports, the first from the Daily Mai, the second from The Sun. The first URL relates one mother's story and it seems like her baby had a narrow escape - the turbulence started so quickly that the child initially wasn't attached to the mother but in the cot. Luckily the baby was not hurt and slept through the event.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ight-hell.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/227258...-packed-brits/

The latter story seems to have had more input - at least unofficially - from BA, and reports 5 crew injured, with 2 of those being more minor. So the captain would not have had a choice but to land at SIN or KUL in terms of crewing levels.

LondonAussie

Thanks for the articles, although the Daily Mail is not the easiest to read. Maybe they do it on purpose to keep you on the site longer trying to decipher what they meant to write.

danmushman

For me, despite what a lot of people say, it makes me more comfortable flying BA.

Sigwx

Hope those involved have a speedy recovery.

Excellent responses to questions from Waterhorse and JerseyPilot.

I too would take anything from Flightradar24 or any other tracking app with a massive pinch of salt, too many algorithms take over and modify data. The only thing reliable is the 1000ft step down which coincides with the 180 turn on the airway to follow the correct allocation of evens/odds for west and east.