Latam Airlines SYD to AKL flight: 50 people treated after mid-air incident | Better HN

Latam Airlines SYD to AKL flight: 50 people treated after mid-air incident | Better HN

147 comments

Tor32y ago

What I don't get is why people are not using seatbelts. The only time I'm not using it is when I'm on the way to and from the bathroom. If I'm seated I'm using the seatbelt.

This. Clear Air Turbulence can strike at any time, and you - as in your body - can get seriously damaged even with moderate turbulence. Few people have ever seen severe or extreme turbulence, including the flight crews, but that can happen as well.

loceng2y ago

When I was 5 or 6 years old I was flying-sitting with my dad, as passengers, though he was an airline pilot, when we hit a pocket of "dead" air. Meals and drinks were just served. For what was at least 3-5 seconds all of the meal trays floated up, hovered and then thankfully relatively gently settled back down. My dad estimated we dropped 200 feet or so.

beAbU2y ago

I was under the impression that seatbelts are basically mandatory at all times. On my recent turkish airlines flight the safety video requested you put it on and leave it on, ans the staff would come by and ask you to put your seatbelt on, even when theres no turbulence.

The "seat belt" indicator light should actually be changed to "dont get up and walk around"

HL33tibCe72y ago

On the half dozen (European) airlines I’ve flown, it’s always been “seatbelts are recommended at all times”. Never a requirement.

Probably the same reason people don't use seatbelts in buses, I'm very often the only one wearing a seatbelt when I travel by bus

I've seen aftermath videos and photos, I'm not taking my chances

enlyth2y ago

Interesting, I've never seen a bus with seat belts

thelastparadise2y ago

My god could you imagine if this happened when you were in the bathroom?

wjnc2y ago

I'm a worrier about things like these. I always imagined that's why the roof in the bathroom is lower and curved. A lot less room for gaining vertical speed. So you'd be temporarily stuck to the ceiling and perhaps a bit dirtied, but less hurt than getting double struck by first the lockers and then the higher ceiling in the aisle.

RandomBacon2y ago

They should install a gravity switch. A simply contact that uses gravity to either remain normally-open or normally-closed, and then when the opposite is true, automatically flush.

It's not the worst place actually, you can't pick up too much momentum since the cabin is so small

dreamcompiler2y ago

Same here, but most passengers don't understand the issue. They think turbulence means "a bumpy flight" when it really means "you will -- without warning -- be slammed against the ceiling and then against the floor, and then against the ceiling again for good measure."

I wear masks in public and I use seatbelts on airplanes, but that's not the shortest path to the boss ape of the town status, and I would guess a lot of people care more about that than their own life.

ta12432y ago

Bathroom, stretching legs, getting something from overhead locker, and of course the cabin crew. I could see at least 20 people at a given time doing one of those things.

I think the seatbelt-sign is outdated. Somehow it should be made clear that if a sign is on, it is not allowed to stand up and move around, and the general rule is that the seatbelt must be locked while sitting.

chrisweekly2y ago

In my 5 decades of flying regularly (US-based flights), this is made crystal clear by flight attendants and repeated PA announcements.

> What I don't get is why people are not using seatbelts.

The terrible UX doesn't help. There is a seatbelt icon on the sign, they announce it as "fasten seatbelt sign", which makes it sound like when it is off you don't have to have it fastened. But it really should be "remain seated" sign.

Also some people don't wear seatbelts in cars as some idiotic macho thing. I assume there is no helping those.

mianos2y ago

It's my understanding this was mid flight and not a situation where the seatbelt sign was lit. I believe the original commenter is suggesting that people wear their seatbelt at all times, if possible, seatbelt sign lit, or not. (Which, as once a very frequent flyer, I do, others don't like to if they don't have to).

pc862y ago

Every single flight I've ever been on except LATAM says to keep your seatbelt fastened when seated even when the seatbelt sign is off. UX isn't the issue, people ignoring common sense things like "maybe my seatbelt should be on when I'm flying through the air at 500mph" is.

ta12432y ago

There are also cases when you should not be wearing a seatbelt -- if you have just got on a plane and it's still being refilled the seatbelt sign is off and sometimes the crew will tell you not to put your seatbelt on while it's being refilled.

benjaminwootton2y ago

It definitely seems like the wise thing to do. There are enough reports of these events even if your risk of being caught up in one is low.

What I don't get is why they serve hot coffee on planes with these ever present risks.

ThePowerOfFuet2y ago

The coffee is generally not hot enough to cause burns, especially given that you will be drinking it immediately upon serving.

koolba2y ago

After the recent incidents, I’d love to see zip line style safety lines in planes. When you get up to use the lavatory, you’d connect your carabiner to the aisle ceiling and floor lines to keep you level in case of a sudden movement.

HL33tibCe72y ago

This idea wouldn’t actually solve most of the biggest problems during turbulence, which is people hitting their heads on the ceiling, and people getting hit by luggage falling out of the overhead storage.

I think having a cable flying around would actually be dangerous in itself. Wouldn’t want to get it caught around your neck…

beAbU2y ago

I think you can forget about using the loo succesfully if you can't even walk down the aisle without incident...

Now imagine your neck catching this zipline.

Latam is Chilean. I am not as well traveled in all SA countries but the exposure I have had suggested that seatbelts in cars are fairly optional still, I suspect on a plane you have less incentive.

They're optional for adults in cars here in New Hampshire where the official state motto is "Live free or die".

Staple_Diet2y ago

While there was most definitely South Americans on that journey, having made that flight myself I can honestly say it would have been well over 50% Aussies on their way to NZ, Santiago, Buenos Aires etc.

XzAeRosho2y ago

I'm from Chile and seatbelt culture is very strong and policed.

Most people in the backseats are very used to use their seatbelts, even more so in the front.

Intercity buses also have mandatory seatbelts.

alamortsubite2y ago

In BsAs it's common to hop in a cab and find, as a courtesy, that they've tucked the safety belts in-between the seat cushions so you have a comfortable ride.

They have signs showing when you need to wear seatbelts, so when the seatbelt light goes out, well, what are people _supposed_ to think?

I have noticed that it does seem to have gotten more common to just leave them on for the duration of the flight, in the last couple of decades.

jwildeboer2y ago

Not turbulence related. Plane (Boeing 787-9) lost instrumentation according to the captain, followed by rapid loss of altitude. When instrumentation came back, flight continued to a safe landing. 12 people were sent to hospital. S always, see avherald.com for the most reliable, non-speculative info.

tomatotomato372y ago

I disagree, the physics of large planes make extreme movements on the plane's z-axis like this via just it's control surfaces near impossible. All the control surfaces can really do is tilt the plane, which in absolute terms will change verticality but relative to the plane is still a longitudinal acceleration. The only thing that can overwhelm the momentum of something with the mass of a small building fast enough to cause injury like this is turbulence.

That being said having the plane lose instruments from the turbulence is a major problem that needs to be fixed

Edit: Rereading the article I did notice a passenger comment about the plane going in a nosedive, which would match the scenarios the others below me have replied with that dont involve turbulence. Always thought the airframe couldn't survive actively maneuvering at such extremes on big jets like that, guess I was wrong.

ViewTrick10022y ago

You can induce multiple Gs when pushing hard enough. Negative Gs and everything and everyone not strapped in flies into the ceiling. Which then must at some point come down.

Injuries from first crashing headfirst into the ceiling and then out of control falling back into your chair is a given when you have hundreds of passengers on board.

Especially on a Boeing which does not limit the flight envelope like an Airbus does.

icegreentea22y ago

You will get negative G when your flight path is "steeper" than the parabolic trajectory you would get traced out by a ballistic object at the same height and speed.

That's how we can get the zero-G flights - by precisely flying the parabola.

alamortsubite2y ago

Let's rephrase that as, this is the story as relayed by one of the passengers to RNZ. If non-speculative info is what you're after, perhaps it's better to wait for the official report.

jwildeboer2y ago

The captain has been quoted with that info of loss of instrumentation and that is on the avherald page. Avherald is quite known for only handing out vetted information, so I do trust this to be true.

telesilla2y ago

Link: https://avherald.com/h?article=51601631&opt=0

>there was blood at the ceiling

>it came back all of the sudden

top quality writing there..

nomilk2y ago

For anyone else wondering, the plane was a

> Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner

(Boeing, but not the 737 Max that has been in the headlines the past few years)

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/3/11/50-people-injur...

ulfw2y ago

As if the 787 was any better. Just see the history of issues and reports about manufacturing.

resolutebat2y ago

Dreamliners have been flying for 13+ years now with zero hull loss accidents or fatalities. There were some teething issues with fuel leaks and batteries, but AFAICT those have long since been ironed out.

The 787 is one of the best airliners ever made. It's been flying more than a decade without a single hull loss. In the first decade the 747 had several non-terrorism related hull losses. The 737 MAX is newer and already has two hull losses.

This seems to be attributed to a technical problem and not turbulence so far. Probably should be a bit skeptical about any explanation this early, but I'm wondering which systems would be powerful enough to cause something like this.

For example, would a pilot be able to manually fly the airplane and cause this kind of incident? Or would the control surfaces of the plane be able to cause this assuming that any safety limits that restrict movement were not working?

It's very easy to get to slightly below 0g by just pushing on the stick or yoke, and that would be enough to cause what the passengers describe here. You could even get well below 0g. Almost all turbulence of the sort that you can experience in flight are not even 10% of the durability limits of the airframe.

EDIT: I was also thinking about "well why should the airplane allow the pilot for such movements then?". And I think a good analogy is the brakes in your car - they do allow for maximum breaking, yet when was the last time you actually pushed it to the max?

(And note that this is 100% speculation, I just wanted to highlight that the pilot can cause such negative acceleration on their own)

xattt2y ago

What about flight laws/flight control modes that prevent this thing from happening?

Unless the aircraft was flying in a degraded state, these limits are supposed to prevent the aircraft from suffering damage during flight.

stby2y ago

If the captain of this LATAM flight didn't report that all systems went down for a short while, I'd bet some money on a malfunctioning ADIRU [0]. The Wikipedia page even includes a nice list of incidents caused by it, mostly with similar results.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_data_inertial_reference_un...

> would a pilot be able to manually fly the airplane and cause this kind of incident?

As a parent and car pilot I used my brake once to teach my children the necessity of wearing seatbelts. You actually do not need to break hard to let them fly around I noticed.

p_l2y ago

Pure speculation, but why I'm reminded of the instruction to reboot your 787 regularly, preferably with staggered reboots of the electric buses?

johnny_canuck2y ago

Reminds me of this Air Canada flight years ago where the pilot confused Venus with an oncoming plane.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/travel/canada-disoriented-pil...

mangamadaiyan2y ago

It isn't all that far-fetched, really. Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon.

... as to _how_ bright it can be - I was once in an area with dark skies, setting up my telescope just before sunset. After dark, I was taking in the beauty of the Cigar Galaxy and then looked up and behind from the scope. My eyes were assaulted by a bright light on the top of the hill behind, and I was cursing the idiot who had turned that light on, when I realized that it was Jupiter, freshly risen above the hill. Jupiter is not as bright as Venus.

On that night, Venus, had it been visible, would've been blindingly brilliant. Flying 10 Km above the ground, with no light pollution, I'm not surprised that the Pilot mistook Venus for an aircraft headlight.

Edit: clarity

cdelsolar2y ago

It always shocks me how bright Venus is. A few months ago I was wondering what the hell that blinding light was, and even though I’m an amateur astronomer I was sure it had to be something artificial. My star app told me it was Venus, and i decided to see it in my telescope for the first time. So I lugged out the 4-inch refractor and no matter what I could not manage to make out its shape. It was supposed to be a crescent but there was too much glare. Next time I’ll try it with the moon filter :)

sandworm1012y ago

I don't understand why so many people refuse to wear seatbelts unless demanded. Had everyone been buckled in I doubt anyone would have been injured. You are in a metal tube doing almost the speed of sound tens of thousands of feet in the air. Keep the belt on.

If you have to get up, keep a hand on something. An airliner cannot pull serious negative gs. You aren't going to be "pinned" to the ceiling. But you should hold to something solid just in case things get a little floaty for a few seconds. Most longtime fliers have witnessed their drinks lift of their trays. The floating doesn't hurt. The issue is when things stop floating and come crashing down.

peter70122y ago

We had the same incident around 2007-2008 with China Airlines. The scary point that it happened almost the same place, from Taiwan to Bali about 1 hour before the landing.

Jamie99122y ago

Taiwan to Bali is nowhere near New Zealand

harshbutfair2y ago

Hardly "almost the same place", it's ~6500km away.

KingOfCoders2y ago

Aliens?

itsthecourier2y ago

Reminds me of that time a japanese flight had a steep turbulence, a passenger hit the ceiling and died.

12 injured into the ceiling in this flight, kind of looks like a check of who was and wasn't wearing the belt

fortran772y ago

This is why you keep your seat belt fastened whenever you're sitting down.

6274672y ago

"major banks 2008: too big to fail"

"Boeing: too big to be grounded"

smcl2y ago

Interestingly, this flight (Sydney-Santiago, via Auckland) is one of a few that many flat-earthers insist does not exist, since it contradicts a theory they have. They'd plot the paths of long-distance flights on a polar azimuthal equidistant projection of earth[0], and note that some one-stop flights look like a straight line on this projection. But those which don't look like a straight line (i.e. that suggest they're wrong) are dismissed as nonexistant, and part of the greater globe earth conspiracy.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projecti...

brabel2y ago

I flew many times between South America and NZ/Australia (and once from LA to Sydney, one of the longest flights you can get), including this exact flight, and find that's hilarious.

smcl2y ago

Yeah I've known someone (a family, actually) who did the same. In case you want a bit of light entertainment, the video where I learned about this is here - don't worry it's debunking flat earth, not in favour it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gFsOoKAHZg

Maybe this was the flight passing through the necessary (government funded) wormhole

smcl2y ago

Or maybe this is a high profile incident planned to keep the globe-head charade going! It is notable that the flight didn't actually go to Santiago in the end ...

Clearly, this incident was caused by a minor malfunction of the teleporter than conveys such planes from one side of the flat earth to the other.

The plane transited from an air stream (of whatever velocity/vector) into one descending vertically at high speed = instant down elevator = passengers in free fall as plane descends = impact roof hard/soft. Soon exit the stream and get used to it = fall down hard from 7-8 feet in random attitude. Down is the worst, a vertical up = pressed into seat and already standing. Pilot might have had a warning or inkling = faster seat belts/sit. In a down acceleration like this all loose objects are affected = missiles, a laptop can hit you hard. Back in the old days, they called these 'air pockets' - lacking velocity they were less dangerous than these occurrences at modern speeds where planes are going at 500-600 miles/hour and the transition is virtually instantaneous.

sp3322y ago

The article says it was a technical problem. The pilot said he lost instrumentation.

A passenger says the pilot says that. I’d wait for further details before firmly concluding that.

Thanks for providing your perspective - Why don't we hear about these as often? Is there tech to avoid these air pockets? Was there some kind of negligence involved or should I be more cautious on planes about leaving my loose belongings lying around?

telesilla2y ago

Aside from the fact that this was not turbulence-related: my understanding is that other airlines in the area inform each other about turbulence they experience, as it cannot be detected reliably. A flight from Chile to New Zealand probably has very little air traffic to keep other pilots informed about the state of winds.

Schroedingers2c2y ago

It's remarkable how almost every serious incident due to equipment errors in the past few months involves a Boeing aircraft rather than an Airbus.

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