Your attention, please

After a string of recent turbulence fiascos, we chart the history of the inflight safety video to see if the latest crop is up to the task...

- HANNAH RALPH

In a pleasing case of nominative determinism, British Airways' Flying with Confidence director, Captain Steve Allright, once reassured me: "Remember that turbulence is uncomfortable but rarely dangerous. It is a perfectly normal part of flying caused by nature." And he's right: out of the circa-400 million flights that took place between 2009 and 2022, there were according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration (the US' regulatory body) - 34 passengers and 129 crew members recorded as seriously injured due to turbulence. The last fatality caused by turbulence on a commercial flight was in 1997, during United Airlines' Flight 826 from Tokyo to Honolulu. That was, until the spring of 2024.

On 21 May, severe turbulence on Singapore Airlines' flight SQ321 saw the death of one British passenger and scores injured when the aircraft experienced a sudden altitude drop of 178 feet in just four seconds. That same month, a case of freak turbulence during a 50-minute flight from Istanbul to Izmir was reported to have left one Turkish Airlines flight attendant with a broken back. The subsequent day, eight passengers would wind up in hospital following a turbulent Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Dublin. In all three incidents, it was those stood, and those seated without their seatbelts fastened, who were launched into the roof of the cabin.