Latam Airlines SYD to AKL flight: 50 people treated after mid-air incident
79 points by kiwih 1 year ago | 147 comments- Tor3 1 year agoWhat 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.
- H8crilA 1 year agoThis. 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.
- loceng 1 year agoWhen 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.
- MichaelZuo 1 year agoPockets of ‘dead’ air are like the rogue waves of the aviation world. Rare but still happens once every few years.
- mschuster91 1 year agoYou've, technically, eaten food that was at zero gravity once for a short period of time.
- MichaelZuo 1 year ago
- loceng 1 year ago
- beAbU 1 year agoI 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"
- HL33tibCe7 1 year agoOn the half dozen (European) airlines I’ve flown, it’s always been “seatbelts are recommended at all times”. Never a requirement.
- beAbU 1 year agoWell, it may be recommended, but if the attendants constantly nag you to put them on, then that's the same as required, no?
Only the obnoxiously hard headed folks would argue back and go "since it's a recommendation and not a requirement I will not sit with my seatbelt on, and there's nothing you can do about it."
- lostlogin 1 year agoSurely required on takeoff/landing?
- beAbU 1 year ago
- HL33tibCe7 1 year ago
- lm28469 1 year agoProbably 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
- enlyth 1 year agoInteresting, I've never seen a bus with seat belts
- lm28469 1 year agoNot in city buses, but flixbuses, school buses, &c.|
These: https://www.usabuscharter.com/uploads/4/3/6/1/43615417/setra...
- Tor3 1 year agoIn my town only the intercity ones used to have them, but these days all the city buses have them too. I don't mind using the seatbelt, but their design isn't optimal - they're hard to put on, particularly if you're wearing a large jacket. A lot of fumbling is required.
- flohofwoe 1 year agoIn Germany at least it depends on the type of bus. Long distance / travel busses (Google translates it to "coach") are required to have seatbelts, regular "city busses" don't.
- rsynnott 1 year agoAs a general rule, buses that go on motorways (ie intercity, mostly) tend to have them; others usually don't.
- Aardwolf 1 year agoThe first few rows of seats sometimes have those, but not all the rows after that
- lm28469 1 year ago
- enlyth 1 year ago
- thelastparadise 1 year agoMy god could you imagine if this happened when you were in the bathroom?
- wjnc 1 year agoI'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.
- RandomBacon 1 year agoThey 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.
- InitialLastName 1 year agoOpen question: to what extent does the flush mechanism in airplane toilets rely on the presence of gravity?
- InitialLastName 1 year ago
- lm28469 1 year agoIt's not the worst place actually, you can't pick up too much momentum since the cabin is so small
- wjnc 1 year ago
- dreamcompiler 1 year agoSame 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."
- numpad0 1 year agoI 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.
- ta1243 1 year agoBathroom, 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.
- qwertox 1 year agoI 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.
- chrisweekly 1 year agoIn my 5 decades of flying regularly (US-based flights), this is made crystal clear by flight attendants and repeated PA announcements.
- gomox 1 year agoIt needs to be safe and clear by design, not confusing to the point where systematic PA announcements are needed to clarify the fact that "seat belt sign is off" actually means "you should wear your seatbelt".
- gomox 1 year ago
- chrisweekly 1 year ago
- progbits 1 year ago> 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.
- mianos 1 year agoIt'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).
- progbits 1 year agoYes I have it fastened all the time too.
My point was the fact the "fasten seatbelt sign" was not lit in the middle of the flight makes people think it is OK to not have it fastened. Which isn't true.
- progbits 1 year ago
- pc86 1 year agoEvery 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.
- ta1243 1 year agoThere 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.
- mianos 1 year ago
- benjaminwootton 1 year agoIt 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.
- jgalt212 1 year agoWhat I don't get is why they serve hot coffee on planes with these ever present risks.
- ThePowerOfFuet 1 year agoThe coffee is generally not hot enough to cause burns, especially given that you will be drinking it immediately upon serving.
- jgalt212 1 year agoThat hasn't been my experience. I mean it's not McDonald's hot, but it's hot enough to cause damaage.
- jgalt212 1 year ago
- ThePowerOfFuet 1 year ago
- koolba 1 year agoAfter 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.
- HL33tibCe7 1 year agoThis 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…
- koolba 1 year ago> This idea wouldn’t actually solve most of the biggest problems during turbulence, which is people hitting their heads on the ceiling, …
It’s two cable lines, one on the ceiling and one on the floor. Each would be separately attached to the passengers harness so the freedom of movement is only up and down, limited to the amount of slack in the short length that connects the passenger to the plane.
> … and people getting hit by luggage falling out of the overhead storage.
We can give everyone a hard hat too.
- InitialLastName 1 year agoNot to mention the cables being a tripping hazard in the (far more common) ingress and egress situations.
- j-a-a-p 1 year agoYou will at least not get sucked out when a door pops open again.
- koolba 1 year ago
- beAbU 1 year agoI think you can forget about using the loo succesfully if you can't even walk down the aisle without incident...
- bloomingeek 1 year agoThis is a great point, I've often wondered why there are no seat belts on airplane toilets. Yes, there would be many obstacles to overcome (please, no course jokes) but there have been several times when I was using the facilities on a plane and turbulence ensued and I almost panicked thinking about all the possible bad things that could happen.
- bloomingeek 1 year ago
- odiroot 1 year agoNow imagine your neck catching this zipline.
- HL33tibCe7 1 year ago
- infecto 1 year agoLatam 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.
- ztetranz 1 year agoThey're optional for adults in cars here in New Hampshire where the official state motto is "Live free or die".
- AlexandrB 1 year agoNH doesn't get enough credit for how weird it is. Between the state motto, the lack of sales or income tax, and stuff like this seatbelt rule it's like we're talking about a totally different country.
- stpe 1 year agoShould it not be ”Live free and die” then?
- rsynnott 1 year agoOr, y'know, both, in this case.
(Huh; I had no idea there was anywhere left in the developed world where they weren't mandatory.)
- AlexandrB 1 year ago
- Staple_Diet 1 year agoWhile 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.
- infecto 1 year agoCertainly but I am not suggesting its entirely on the passengers but the culture of safety in a given region. In the US you have a before flight belt check and sometimes mentions during flight. In a lot of other countries I notice that flights are not as concerned about those belt checks.
- infecto 1 year ago
- XzAeRosho 1 year agoI'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.
- diego_sandoval 1 year agoI'm also from Chile, I travel intercity pretty often, and most times, I'm the only person on the bus that I see wearing a seatbelt.
It's technically mandatory, but I've traveled like 12 times in the last year, and only twice the assistant has done his nag-round checking that passengers are wearing their seatbelts.
- diego_sandoval 1 year ago
- alamortsubite 1 year agoIn 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.
- MandieD 1 year agoYeah, we tried (and failed) to dig out the buried cab seatbelts in Lima and Cusco.
- MandieD 1 year ago
- ztetranz 1 year ago
- rsynnott 1 year agoThey 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.
- H8crilA 1 year ago
- jwildeboer 1 year agoNot 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.
- tomatotomato37 1 year agoI 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.
- ViewTrick1002 1 year agoYou 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.
- jrockway 1 year agoPeople have averted hijackings by using sudden movements to whip the hijackers around the cabin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Express_Flight_705
- jrockway 1 year ago
- icegreentea2 1 year agoYou 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.
- ViewTrick1002 1 year ago
- alamortsubite 1 year agoLet'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.
- jwildeboer 1 year agoThe 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.
- iamtheworstdev 1 year agoFrom what I've read - a person is claiming the captain said. The captain himself hasn't explicitly admitted to anything yet.
- iamtheworstdev 1 year ago
- jwildeboer 1 year ago
- telesilla 1 year ago
- 867-5309 1 year ago>there was blood at the ceiling
>it came back all of the sudden
top quality writing there..
- 1 year ago
- tomatotomato37 1 year ago
- nomilk 1 year agoFor 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...
- taspeotis 1 year ago[flagged]
- ulfw 1 year agoAs if the 787 was any better. Just see the history of issues and reports about manufacturing.
- resolutebat 1 year agoDreamliners 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.
- p_l 1 year agoAnd an issue where if not regularly rebooted, preferably with staggered (by days) reboots, they lose all power, including instrumentation and controls, after 248 days of uptime.
Additionally an Airworthiness Directive from 2020 requires, at least in europe, to reboot more often than 51 days due to stale data in common core system, with various network packets being dropped and system showing incorrect data to pilots.
- j-a-a-p 1 year agoIs 'hull loss' the equivalent of 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' for space travel?
- testaccount133 1 year ago[flagged]
- p_l 1 year ago
- rayiner 1 year agoThe 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.
- resolutebat 1 year ago
- taspeotis 1 year ago
- fabian2k 1 year agoThis 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?
- H8crilA 1 year agoIt'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)
- xattt 1 year agoWhat 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.
- icegreentea2 1 year agoBriefly going slight negative G will not damage the airplane.
- Vecr 1 year agoIt's a Boeing, that's not really how it works. What airplane refuses to let you do negative gs anyway?
- icegreentea2 1 year ago
- xattt 1 year ago
- stby 1 year agoIf 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...
- j-a-a-p 1 year ago> 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.
- H8crilA 1 year ago
- p_l 1 year agoPure speculation, but why I'm reminded of the instruction to reboot your 787 regularly, preferably with staggered reboots of the electric buses?
- johnny_canuck 1 year agoReminds 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...
- mangamadaiyan 1 year agoIt 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
- cdelsolar 1 year agoIt 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 :)
- mangamadaiyan 1 year agoOut of curiosity, what eyepiece were you using?
- mangamadaiyan 1 year ago
- cdelsolar 1 year ago
- mangamadaiyan 1 year ago
- sandworm101 1 year agoI 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.
- peter7012 1 year agoWe 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.
- Jamie9912 1 year agoTaiwan to Bali is nowhere near New Zealand
- harshbutfair 1 year agoHardly "almost the same place", it's ~6500km away.
- KingOfCoders 1 year agoAliens?
- Jamie9912 1 year ago
- itsthecourier 1 year agoReminds 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
- fortran77 1 year agoThis is why you keep your seat belt fastened whenever you're sitting down.
- 627467 1 year ago"major banks 2008: too big to fail"
"Boeing: too big to be grounded"
- smcl 1 year agoInterestingly, 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...
- brabel 1 year agoI 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.
- smcl 1 year agoYeah 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
- smcl 1 year ago
- SirHound 1 year agoMaybe this was the flight passing through the necessary (government funded) wormhole
- smcl 1 year agoOr 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 ...
- smcl 1 year ago
- rsynnott 1 year agoClearly, 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.
- 1 year ago
- brabel 1 year ago
- aurizon 1 year agoThe 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.
- sp332 1 year agoThe article says it was a technical problem. The pilot said he lost instrumentation.
- ceejayoz 1 year agoA passenger says the pilot says that. I’d wait for further details before firmly concluding that.
- ceejayoz 1 year ago
- djtango 1 year agoThanks 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?
- telesilla 1 year agoAside 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.
- brabel 1 year agoThe incident happened while still on the Sydney to Auckland leg of the trip, which is not as lonely (but yeah, still not a whole lot of planes going each way).
- everfrustrated 1 year agoWhile Latam airline, flight was actually Sydney-Auckland
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- brabel 1 year ago
- telesilla 1 year ago
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- sp332 1 year ago
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- Schroedingers2c 1 year agoIt's remarkable how almost every serious incident due to equipment errors in the past few months involves a Boeing aircraft rather than an Airbus.
