The recent incident involving a Singapore Airlines flight that had to make an emergency landing in Bangkok on Tuesday (21) after “severe turbulence” has raised awareness about the dangers of turbulence and the areas where passengers are likely to experience it.
The Boeing 777-300ER was traveling from London to Singapore with 211 passengers and 18 crew members on board when it “encountered severe turbulence en route” over Myanmar. One person died and more than 30 were injured.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), turbulence is created by atmospheric pressure, jet streams, air around mountains, cold or warm weather fronts, or storms.
It can be “as insignificant as a few annoying bumps,” but it can also “momentarily leave an airplane out of control or cause structural damage,” according to Weather.gov.
During the Singapore Airlines incident, flight tracking data from FlightAware shows that the aircraft rapidly lost altitude after traveling at 37,000 feet. A severe storm that was rapidly forming in the area may have caused the turbulence.
The most turbulent routes:
Turbli analyzed 150,000 routes and ranked those with active flight paths in December 2023.
The most turbulent flight was the route from Santiago, Chile, to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, according to the data. Meanwhile, the second most turbulent route was determined between Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, followed by Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province in northwest China, and Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China.
Flights departing from Tokyo and Seoul to areas in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India are among the five long-haul routes that experience the most turbulence, according to the Turbli database.
Here are the top turbulent routes in North America:
1. Nashville, Tennessee, to Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
2. Charlotte, North Carolina, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
3. Denver to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
4. New York (JFK) to Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
5. Warwick, Rhode Island, to Syracuse, New York
6. Atlanta to Northern Virginia
7. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
8. New York (LaGuardia) to Portland, Maine
9. Boston to Syracuse, New York
10. Boston to Philadelphia
Source: Fox Business