What Happens If Your Jumbo Jet Stalls in Mid-Air?
It’s called the stick shaker – an ‘attention-getter’ for pilots to tell them that their aircraft is about to stall.
And it’s a warning that one serving airline captain received as he flew over north Africa in a fully laden Boeing 747 a few years ago.
The cause, he says, was extreme turbulence, which had pushed the aircraft to below its minimum speed, despite the engines being on full power.
He’s re-living the dramatic incident with MailOnline Travel in a chat about turbulence he is keen to have in a bid to help ease passengers’ nerves about the phenomenon.
He explains why we’re so scared of it, how pilots maneuver around it and what they do when it stalls their plane.
The UK-based pilot, speaking anonymously, explains that there are two types of turbulence – one that can be spotted, and another, more unnerving variety.
He says: ‘There’s turbulence associated with precipitation, be it rain or snow, and we can identify that on a weather radar that we have on the aircraft.
‘So we can always avoid that type of turbulence. Unless we need to come into land in that sort of turbulence, in which case it’s a judgment call about whether the turbulence is within safe limits. If it is, we’ll commit to an approach and have a go. If it’s not within safe limits we’ll divert to another airfield, where it is safe, or hold off until such time as it is safe to land.
‘The sort of turbulence that people often get anxious about is clear air turbulence, which is often what happens at high altitude. And that’s associated with the intercontinental jet streams that circle the globe. And where these jet streams collide, obviously is determined by weather patterns. And when they collide it creates ripples in the air. And that’s what clear air turbulence is.
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‘It’s quite easily predictable in terms of where it might be on a given day, and weather forecasters are really good at forecasting it, such that pilots can avoid the worst areas of it, but we can’t see it on radar, so we tend to rely on other aircraft reporting it, such that we can either avoid it, or put the seat belt signs on.’
This lurking, unseen turbulence, is why it’s always a good idea to belt up on an aircraft.
He continues: ‘Because we have a lot of people now who fly an awful lot, sometimes they’re a bit casual about whether they should return to their seats and put their seatbelts on, and people think it’s a bit of a drag, but there will be that one time in a hundred when it suddenly becomes really important to be in your seat.’
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