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Comment by IG_Semmelweiss | Hacker News Reader

I'll be the first to admit that I held conflicting views:

For one, I never thought someone could die from turbulence (besides a medical condition such as heart risk).

At the same time, I'm sure certain falls/impacts are quite lethal even in very short distances.

Yet, i dont understand how turbulence makes a plane fall 6000 ft in 3min, unless the automated (turbulence?) avoidance system engaged and caused the injury in the 1st place. Yet, at the same time, the rate of descent may have been necessary to keep control of the plane.

So many questions

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Descending 6000 feet in 3 minutes is by no means special, that's just journalists being bad. Planes regularly descend at a higher rate, and nobody gets injured. Also, you don't need that high of a fall to have people get injured, a few tens of meters is more than enough, if it happens very suddenly (seconds, not minutes), which is the case with turbulence.

> Yet, i dont understand how turbulence makes a plane fall 6000 ft in 3min

That's because it didn't, and armchair experts are breathlessly reporting on a completely normal (if even a bit slow) descent from cruising altitude to a lower altitude as part of their arrival into Bangkok.

> unless the automated (turbulence?) avoidance system engaged

There is no such thing. Civilian airliners don't have any automatic avoidance systems - they can only notify the pilots when there's a windshear (drastic wind change), another plane very close by, terrain close by, etc. But it's only (very strong) warnings, and it's impossible to detect/predict turbulence.

There is no such thing as turbulence detection. And I haven’t heard of automatic avoidance in any airplane I know about. (Unless you’re referring to something like the F-16 ground avoidance system.)

There is “wind shear detection” but that relies on the planes weather radar detecting moving columns of water droplets.

Not automatic, but...

https://icao.usmission.gov/air-carrier-turbulence-related-in...

>> The study also highlighted a new product, a turbulence nowcast, that combines numerous data sources to produce forecasts that are updated every 15 minutes – providing air carriers, all users of the National Airspace System and the air traffic controllers who support them – timely and critical safety information about locations and severity of potential turbulence. The turbulence nowcast is not yet widely used so the NTSB recommended the FAA and the NWS work together to fully implement its adoption and use in the national airspace system.

AV herald is reporting that the person who died had a heart attack.

> Authorities in Bangkok reported a British citizen (73) on board died as result of a heart attack

Also reporting that

> a second person may have succumbed to the injuries in hospital.

https://avherald.com/h?article=518e5d47&opt=0

It looks like the 73-year old did die of heart attack.

Source?

Edit: nm, another post has it

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