Twelve passengers have been injured during turbulence on a flight from Doha to Dublin.
Dublin Airport said six passengers and six crew reported injuries during the Qatar Airways flight which landed safely as scheduled shortly before 1pm on Sunday.
“Upon landing, the aircraft was met by emergency services, including Airport Police and our Fire and Rescue department, due to 6 passengers and 6 crew [12 total] on board reporting injuries after the aircraft experienced turbulence while airborne over Turkey,” a statement on the airport’s official X account said.
“The Dublin Airport team continues to provide full assistance on the ground to passengers and airline staff.”
Were you onboard? Email andy.gregory@independent.co.uk
The latest incident comes days after a British man was killed on a violently turbulent flight from Heathrow to Singapore.
Geoffrey Kitchen, a father-of-two and theatre director taking a “last big holiday” with his wife, died from a suspected heart attack. Fifty other people were injured after unbuckled passengers hit the cabin ceiling while the plane dropped 6,000ft in a matter of minutes.
Singapore Airlines said that flight encountered “sudden extreme turbulence” around 10 hours after departure while flying over Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Basin at 37,000 feet, with the ensuing chaos causing the pilot to declare a medical emergency and landing in Bankok some 90 minutes short of its intended destination.
Tracking website Flightradar24 said data sent from the aircraft showed a “rapid change in vertical rate, consistent with a sudden turbulence event”, adding that there were “some severe” thunderstorms in the area at the time.
Clear air turbulence is described by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as “sudden severe turbulence occurring in cloudless regions that causes violent buffeting of aircraft” which “is especially troublesome because it is often encountered unexpectedly and frequently without visual clues to warn pilots of the hazard”.
It is rare for turbulence to cause injuries on flights – and even rarer for passengers to lose their lives.
“Aircraft are designed to cope with any turbulence that nature can throw at them and I can’t recall any modern airliner crashing due to turbulence,” flight safety specialist Steve Landells previously wrote for the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa).
“The injuries we see tend to occur when people aren’t strapped in. This may be because the turbulence is encountered without warning but we also see quite a lot of people hurt because they don’t obey the “fasten seat belt” instructions.
“So, even if the signs aren’t on, always have your seatbelt done up when you are sitting down and don’t be tempted to get up when the captain has told you to strap in.”
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