Your attention, please

After a string of recent incidents involving extreme turbulence, 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 US Federal Aviation Administration - 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 May 21, severe turbulence on Singapore Airlines' flight SQ321 saw the death of one British passenger, and scores injured when the aircraft experienced a sudden 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 standing, and those seated without their seatbelts fastened, who were launched into the roof of the cabin.

And while it's true that your drive to the airport remains exponentially riskier than the flight itself (air travel remains the safest mode of transport, with no hull losses or fatal accidents involving passenger jet aircraft in 2023), researchers believe turbulence will only gain pace alongside global warming. "We have evidence suggesting the increase has already begun," says Paul Williams, professor of Atmospheric Science and coauthor of the University of Reading's latest study. As airlines now debate stricter seatbelt policies, an ace up their sleeve emerges for examination: the inflight safety video.