The media is filled with stories about the horribly chaotic events on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore last night. One person was killed and dozens were injured.
The incident occurred in the waters off the coast of Myanmar (location shown on the map below) at 0807 UTC this morning (May 21).
The FlightAware website provides minute-by-minute flight information during critical periods. The last column shows the elevation change per minute.
OH. A sudden drop in altitude began about 7 minutes into the hour.
I doubt I know what happened. They encountered chaos related to the thunderstorm.
This is a satellite image visible 3 minutes after the incident (from a Japanese geostationary weather satellite). The aircraft’s position is shown with an arrow.
Even better, below is a color-enhanced close-up infrared satellite image. Infrared images tell us the height of the clouds. At the time of the accident, the plane was approaching a convective zone (thunderstorm).
Significant turbulence is entirely possible in such a location.
There is extreme turbulence at the top of thunderstorms and in the near environment, as atmospheric waves (gravity waves) can propagate out of the thunderstorm (see figure below).
