At least 47 wounded due to turbulence en route on IBERIA's flight Madrid - Lima

[Guatico]

Hi!

As reported by national newspaper and TV Teletext:

Sudden descent due to heavy turbulence en route caused some of the passengers to hit their heads against the cabin ceiling as they were about to have supper. :ooh:

No further information at the moment.

[BEagle]

"For your own comfort and safety, we advise you to keep your seatbelts fastened even when the signs are off...."

But since when did many SLF bother to listen to the PA?

Hope that the cabin crew were OK!

[Final 3 Greens]

How many of the 'pax' reported, I wonder, are in fact CC injured whilst doing their job?

I often watch them giving a service in turb where I am pleased to be strapped to the airframe, even though it may only be officially 'slight.'

Not a job that I would like to do, although I'm grateful that they choose to.

[Guatico]

Seemingly, 3 members of the crew were among the injured.

The plane could make it to land without problems and 5 of the injured were taken to city hospitals for observation whereas other 23 were conveyed to nearby clinics as they suffered contusions and in order to search for likely fractures.

According to a passenger statement afterwards, it happened all of a sudden even preventing the crew to switch on the "fasten your seatbelts" light, and panic took place in the cabin.

There were people from different nationalities among the passengers such as Spaniards, Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Italians, Belgians and Peruvians.

[bluesafrica]

Sure hope that one day it will be mandatory to "buckle up" when seated. This simple rule would save many more lives than Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force in USA.
Blues:ok:

[Avman]

Still beats me though how with all the technolgy at our disposal these days we still can't see these freak pockets of turbulence.

[Bre901]

Trouble is it is generally clear air turbulence, so that weather radar techniques are useless.

What could work are Lidars (explained here (http://www.ogp.noaa.gov/epic/daily/2week/#wed)). Lidars are now routinely used for remote wind measurements in large scale meteorological experiments, but they usually rely on particles or aerosols in air (rather few at the current flight levels) and are generally bulky (most of the time ship or ground based).

I don't think there are any commercially available lidars that could be mounted in the nose radome of an airliner (and cheap enough for beancounters to approve them :E )

[EDDNHopper]

(Hi there, 901, nice to meet you here...!)

You might also want to check Aviation Today - Tracking down turbulence (http://www.aviationtoday.com/cgi/av/show_mag.cgi?pub=av&mon=0903&file=0903perspectives.htm) and a small LiDAR animation (http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Movie/Electra/HTML/EM-0009-03.html) .

[bankrupt]

To ty in with your comment bluesafrica, the crew has the right to set a rule to that effect for their flight, no universal rule is required if any crewmember feels al the pax should stay buckeled up that is the law for that flight, if the person is not overriden by a higher ranking crewmemeber.

Inother words it is up to you.

[bluesafrica]

Agree what you are saying. I never forget to inform my paxs "to buckle up when ever seated" , period.
Still would help if it was made mandatory like in the road traffic.
Too many people get hurt without a real reason every year when as soon as they see the light go out to unbuckle in the hurry.
Have a look next time when you travel in the back, it looks like they are even in the hurry to do it!
Blues

[Pom Pax]

As usual when a poster for whom English is not their first language makes a slightly incorrect choice of words some clever clogs jumps in. Be tolerant, the English language has the most words of any language.
Out of interest I tried Babel Fish,
injured wounded > Spanish > dañado herido > English > damaged hurt.

My pet hate is those that lay over 3 or 4 seats on long haul, they should be secured with all 4 straps and even invited to pay for the other three!

[bluskis]

PomPax

Hardly tolerant yourself are you.

If they are free why shouldn't empty seats be used for the comfort of anyone lucky enough to be near by.
You would have to be pretty tall to use 4 seats in this manner, and doing so may well reduce DVT potential

[ATC Watcher]

PomPax, 3 or 4 empty seats next to each other on Long haul ?
Which airline ? I will change my booking plans next time :p

A cheap way to avoid being trap in most CAT ( but not all ) would be to use wind reports from preceeding aircraft IRSs , downlink those to a mega computer which will calculate and display where the core wind is and therefore indicate the areas of possible CAT ( generally only on one side of the wind core ). You could uplink the picture at regular intervals and crews could avoid those areas.

[MichaelJP59]

As a fairly frequent flyer, it strikes me that the briefing about the keeping seat belts buckled just washes over people, especially as I suspect most people have never experienced the sort of sudden negative-g that causes most injuries in turbulence.

Perhaps the pilot should do a quick stick-forward "bunt" at the top of climb to demonstrate what could happen:)

- Michael

[Bre901]

MichaelJP59

Perhaps the pilot should do a quick stick-forward "bunt" at the top of climb to demonstrate what could happen
Note sure that Cabin Crew and the legal department would appreciate that kind of stunt. :p

This being said, there must be a way to show people what happens in negative gravity. Maybe some videos shot in a vomit Comet/Airbus could do the trick, especially if you show them in the middle of those cr@ppy amateur videos of kids falling from their bikes or dogs bumping into the camera :yuk:

[eal401]

It's always struck me as strange, people who don't keep their seatbelts on. I always do, after all, I don't get in my car, put my seatbelt on, drive off, then remove it once I am on the motorway!

[Menen]

Is it certain that unforecast CAT was the culprit? Often the sudden turbulence is the result of the crew failing to pick an undetected Cb top - unseen because the radar tilt was not optimum, or maybe the gain was in auto at high altiude instead of max gain. Max gain and judicious use of tilt is vital at high altitude to pick up the slightest hint of moisture which could give a clue to something nasty at the cruising level if at night or in cloud. And sometimes even the range is not been monitored closely by the crew because of preoccupation with other matters.

[Halfnut]

Wonder if they asked for a ride report…….nawwww only one of those limp wrist “North American aircrew” would be “paranoid about turbulence."

Real men don't ask for a ride report!