Etihad turbulence out of WA
 

'I thought we were going to fall out of the sky': Perth woman's Etihad nightmare

According to the article they encountered heavy turbulence about 45 minutes out of Perth. Nothing too unusual about hitting turbulence, except that on this occasion the flight returned to Perth and the airline reportedly said the aircraft was going to be inspected for damage. Is that unusual?

The article has the usual "I thought we were all going to die" stuff, but what's really *really* unusual is that the picture at the top of the page *is* an Etihad 787!!!!!

I think this puts it all in perspective....

Since when has turbulence caused a plane to turn back unless it was that severe that it caused structural damage? Can't really gauge much from the usual sensationalised media reports.

How were the crew to know the aircraft hadn't suffered structural damage? It's not like there's a big, flashing, 'Structural Damage' light.

They were obviously concerned enough by the severity of the turbulence to suspect something might not be right, so did the safe thing and returned to PER to get it checked out (as reported in the article).

If there's no damage then they still did the right thing by addressing their concerns. Only they can determine their actions because only they were there, unlike second-guessers.

Injuries maybe?

Interesting.

The SMH article said that there were no injuries, but there was severe turbulence.

I would imagine that most airlines would ground an aircraft after a severe turbulence encounter; only releasing an aircraft back into service after the relevant engineering inspections.

So... encountering severe turbulence 45 minutes into a several hour flight the crew decided to return to Perth.

Without being there, and only having the SMH article to base my opinion on, I'd still say probably a good call. In any case, I'd be surprised if the crew acted outside their company guidelines in such a situation.

DIVOSH!

Random thought bubble…….flight control problem related severe turbulence rather than the weather kind? It's not uncommon in that part of the world….

C441

Hadn't thought of that... The 'Geraldton Triangle'...


DIVOSH!

Report in 'The West' of severe turbulence forecast. Anyone got the SIGWX chart for that time?

Do you guys ever read what nonsense you write?

"Geraldton Triangle"!! Remove the tinfoil hats and measure the distance between Geraldton and "that part of the World" and you'll realise that it's actually over 700km from where the A330(s) had the problems with their flight control computers (Learmonth).

Now, I know it wasn't a Qantas flight and, therefore, according to all Australians, it can't possibly be crewed by qualified, experienced, pilots who know how to make a decent decision :rolleyes: but what is SO unreasonable in accepting that a non-QF flight experienced severe turbulence, the crew were concerned about the state of their aircraft and they brought it back to Perth because that was the most sensible thing to do?

Last time I checked EY discussion was banned on here?

Pontius

'Geraldton Triangle'... meant as a joke mate.....:ok:

DIVOSH!

A good one too!
Relax guy

If it was a dig at C441's geography then, yes, it is a good one.

If not......you know what they say about day jobs :}

Crew called a mayday so must have been bad

Mayday? How do you know?

The other Pontius was a pretty serious dude too apparently!:)

Oh and by the way if we're being critically accurate; the 'other' flight control incident was on a Malaysian 777 not a second 330.

So I guess you're right. It couldn't possibly have been a flight control problem as it wasn't far enough north. Thought bubble explosively popped.

......It's still the weekend tomorrow. Relax & enjoy it!:ok:

By definition severe turbulence means that the pilot is not in control of the aircraft so if you have the capacity to make a radio call then Mayday is the appropriate one-you can't be out of control without being in a Mayday situation. Landing at Perth was a very good decision-definitely a far better option than continuing out over the ocean into ETOPS without knowing what damage had been caused.

Sigmets were valid for severe turbulence in the area at the time and were being broadcast by MEL CTR, but then again that happens all the time.

If it's clear air turbulence as this was, then there's no easy way to avoid it. Sure you can leave the seatbelt signs on but this sounds like it was more about damage to the aircraft than injuries to Pax.

Just about every aircraft that afternoon on the north/south run to/from Perth copped it to varying extents. Winds went from 80kt SW to 30kt N in 4000ft. Thanks to an excellent airep from an Aussie on the outbound Scoot 787 we were prepared, strapped everyone in and expedited decent as we went into it.
Definitely "Severe":cool: