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> How common is it for a plane to fall 4,000 feet in seconds? It wasn't 4,000 feet, but last month a United Airlines flight leaving Hawaii dropped 1,425 feet s

• elygre 4y ago
  That event got world wide news coverage, indicating that is was highly unusual.
  • Zanni 4y ago
    Not that unusual. Just a month earlier, 25 passengers were injured on a flight coming into Hawaii from Phoenix, 6 of them severely enough to require hospitalization. [0] "Between 2009 and 2021, at least 146 people, including passengers and crew members, were seriously injured by turbulence ..." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/business/hawaii-airlines-turbulence-smoke.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/business/hawaii-airlines-...
    • throwawayacc5 4y ago
      Considering the billion people flying in that time frame, 146 serious injuries is less than a rounding error.
      • User23 4y ago
        It’s precisely because we’ve treated these “rounding errors” seriously that aviation is so incredibly safe. It didn’t used to be, it got that way because the engineers treated even a single injury as an unacceptable failure.
        • throwawayacc5 4y ago
          Except this isn't even a rounding error, it's less than that. You can't engineer out the basic physics of turbulence for winged propelled aircraft.
          • Zanni 4y ago
            Agree that turbulence is inescapable, but that's exactly why every passenger should have a seat belt.