From the Australian Hiss. What's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, May twenty three. One hundred thousand Chinese students have swollen the ranks of foreign enrollments at Australia's elite universities. The Australian dot com dot U is revealing today new figures showing overseas enrollments are at their highest ever level
for this time of year. The federal government is at war with a tribunal after it released an immigration detainee who'd been convicted of domestic violence offending and now has been charged with murder. The tribunal blamed the minister, and the Coalition says it demonstrates labor has lost control of the detention system. Singapore Airlines is scrambling to recover from a devastating mid air accident that killed one passenger and injured dozens. It was via turbulence, So what caused it
and what can passengers do to stay safe? That's today's episode.
They'll come about sing of our airlines. As the safety equip mentioned, this aircraft may differ from that on other aircraft. Please give us your attention.
We've all heard this announcement and we've all probably rolled our eyes at the spiel.
And the unlikely event off an emergency or when you hear to command brace brace, assume the brace position.
Airlines try to make the safety videos fun in the hope passengers actually watch, and there's a breed of flight attendant who knows how to get everyone's attention.
That we're going to show you how to.
Fact and make three.
If you're coming with children or anyone that's acting like one, make sure you put your own mask personal.
Look to the letter and look to the raid, and then choose the one with the most earning predential after college, and then work.
A beautiful bikini is a quick leather the water active beat it late. How in the world that works, They have no idea, So if you figure it out, please do let me know.
And if my chanswers does not in plate, well grab your neighbor and hold on for dear lady.
It's all very entertaining, but maybe we should have been paying attention all along. On Tuesday night, Singapore Airlines flight s K three two one suddenly became seriously scary.
As seventy three year old man has died when a flight from London to Singapore experienced extreme and sudden turbulence. The Singapore Airlines flight with fifty six Australians on board an emergency landing in Bangkok. Dozens of other passengers have been taken to hospital as well, including seven people who were critically injured.
Passengers have since spoken out about those horrifying few moments.
It was instantaneous, It really was in.
Horrible The entire thing happened within the span of less than ten seconds, Like it was really really quick.
And I ended up pitching my head on the ceiling.
Some four people are walking around, ended up doing somersaults.
I saw people come across the aisle just like going completely horizontal, hitting the ceiling and landing back down and like really a positions. Robin Ironside is the Australian's aviation writer Robin This must have been a terrifying incident for the people on board.
Absolutely to be having your breakfast to you two hours from your destination, I should imagine people would have been fairly calm and then all of a sudden, absolute chaos breaks loose. Everything's flying through the air, including people, and nobody actually knew sort of why it was happening and when it would end, and it certainly looked very ugly.
The plane was over me and mar at the time, flying from London to Singapore, and there were reports that there were thunderstorms in the area at the time. What do we know about what happened exactly and why.
We have seen the radar images which suggest there was some thunderstorm activity. Normally pilots would try to avoid flying close to a thunderstorm so they weren't subject to any sort of turbulence. So we don't really know what was in the pilot's minds if they were attempting to go around a thunderstorm and just clipped the outer edges of it.
Speaking to pilots today that have suggested that even the kilometers from a thunderstorm, you can still experience some of the effects in the plane, which you think this plane might have experienced those effects.
At seven forty nine am, the Boeing Triple seven three hundred er suddenly went up about fourteen hundred feet and then down about eighteen hundred feet. For a bit of context, the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan were just over thirteen hundred feet high. The Sydney Harbor bridge rises about
four hundred and forty feet from the water. This is fourteen hundred feet up, then eighteen hundred feet down in a second or two, and then four minutes later the plane descended another six thousand feet, but this was the pilots beginning their emergency controlled descent into Bangkok. Singapore air Lines is regarded as one of the safest airlines in
the world. The last time it experienced a major incident was two thousand, when a plane bound for Los Angeles smashed into construction equipment at a Taiwan airport after it tried to take off from the wrong runway. More than eighty people died.
They've got a really good safety records, Singapore Airlines, so it's a terrible blow for them. Their CEO made a video address. They've been doing fairly regular updates on their Facebook page as well as on other social media platforms to inform people of what's happening with that particular flight and with the people on board.
On behalf of Singapore Airlines, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the DC's We are very sorry for the traumatic experience that everyone on board as Q three to one went through.
I think they'll be looking very closely at exactly what happened and to ensure something like this never happens again.
So what is turbulence? There are different types. One is called clear air turbulence. It's virtually invisible to pilots and happens when air is moving inside the jet streams. They're the high altitude air currents that ring the globe up where planes travel. Then there's the kind of turbulence encountered by this Singapore air Lines flight. It's caused by moisture in the air from storm activity. Normally, is turbulence dangerous.
There's certainly a lot of different variations in turbulence. As you described. You know that that feeling when your stomach drops, I mean that's probably considered a fairly mild form of turbulence, whereas this is probably at the other end of the scale. A lot of flights do experience turbulence, and pilots do plan the journey around that. They do try to minimize it as much as possible. But aircraft are built to
withstand a lot of force. They are built to withstand such turbulence as they experienced on this particular flight and fly through it intact, coming up what we.
Should be doing to stay safe in the air. Exciting news Later this week, we're releasing a new cold case investigative podcast by our friend and colleague Headley Thomas. He created The Teacher's Pet, The Night Driver and Shandy Story, and the new podcast is the gripping mystery of a young mum who tucked her kids into bed one night and was never seen again. To be the first to know when the podcast drops, go to the Australian dot com dot au and join our subscribers. We'll be back
after this break. In January, a panel suddenly flew off a Boeing plane mid flight.
Passengers in the United States have survived a terrifying mid air remergency, and Alaska Airlines flight bound for California was forced to make an emergency landing in Oregon after the door of a brand new aircraft blew out.
This thing for Airlines flight was a Boeing aircraft. Boeing's having a tough year, isn't it. Would there be anything to do with the make of this aircraft that has contributed to this? Do you think, Robin No, I don't think so.
In this instance. I think it's probably just a bit of bad luck for Boeing. Again, I'm sure they weren't terribly thrilled to hear that it was a Boeing Triple seven that was involved in this incident. Boeing have thousands of aircraft that fly around the world every day, as do Airbus, and it was just probably unlucky that this particular incident involved a Boeing Triple seven.
I remember reading an article by a pilot talking about turbul and why it was nothing to worry about, and he compared it to being in a boat on a slightly bumpy lake. He said, the plane's going to bump up and down a little bit, but you're completely safe. You know, you're not going to fall out of the sky. Is that still right?
Well, you'd certainly like to think so. And just given the safety record of jet aircraft, it's quite incredible. Last year and twenty twenty three there were no fatal jet airliner incidents. It's quite extraordinary. So far on twenty twenty four, we'll have to say that there has been one fatality with this unfortunate gentleman on this particular flight. So I guess we're already doing worse than we did the previous year,
but it's still incredibly safe. When you think of the billions and millions of people who fly every day and the very low level of incidents, it's much safer than getting in your car and driving to work.
So how important are those safety briefings?
I think the main takeaway that is the seat belt. I mean, hopefully we won't have to worry about if the oxygen masks fall down. Hopefully we won't have to worry about that life jacket and be relying on that little light and whistle. I wouldn't like to test it out, but the seat belt is something that you can control. I mean, seat belts are an important safety feature of cars. They're just as important, if not more so, in planes.
So the idea is to keep them on anytime that you're sitting down, but they understand that every now and then you might have to get up stretch your legs. But if you keep your seat belt on when you're sitting down, that's the best protection that you have from turbulence.
Why do you think this story is taken off so much? I'm certainly reading everything I can find about it.
I think It's one of those things because we all do travel on planes at some stage, and the idea of being in that very closed environment in such a terrifying situation. I think it's something that we can all relate to a little bit and is one of our worst fears. I mean, as a bit of a nervous flyer, I really don't like turbulence at all, So the idea of having your flight turn into like a rollercoaster ride is really horrifying. It's like anything that happens at aviations.
It's the unusualness of it, but still it's still familiar in a lot of ways. So I think that's what makes it resonate with a lot of people.
Robin, I feel terrible that we've made you be aviation writer when you're a nervous flyer. Does a job caused this or is it a coincidence.
It's a very mild level of anxiety that I experience. I have to say, it's just you know, when that turbulence strikes, though, I always do feel a bit uneasy. I don't know, probably everyone experiences a sense of unease, but yeah, I just think, oh, maybe I'm not such a confident flyer as I like to think I.
Am Robin Iroinside is the Australian's aviation reporter. Come back to the front tomorrow for the big reveal. Headley Thomas will join us to discuss his new podcast. In the meantime, subscribe to get Australia's best journalism at the Australian dot com dot au