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The passengers and crew on-board Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 experienced a terrifying “rollercoaster” that saw their Boeing 777-300ER aircraft suddenly climb then pitch down within seconds, according to a Qantas pilot with more than 20 years’ flying experience. AIPA vice president and current pilot Mark Hofmeyer said the horror moment 37,000 feet in the air was likely caused by thunderstorms, or convective turbulence, rather than clear air turbulence. “Clear air turbulence is normally associated with a jet stream, a really strong core of air,” he told NewsWire on Wednesday.

“You don’t get many jet streams around the equator, which is where this happened. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. “What you have up there though, is you get really big storms.



Big puffy clouds, lots of air moving up, lots of air moving down, big thunderstorms. “From what I can see from the telemetry (data collection), they have hit some convective turbulence, where the aircraft suddenly gone into a rate of climb and then it has suddenly gone into a rate of descent. It was like a rollercoaster.

” The turbulence hit the plane while it was over Myanmar on its way to Singapore from London. Mr Hofmeyer said the pilots had responded with impressive professional cool to the sudden jolt of chaos. “If you’ve just experienced this really scary event, the first thing you want to do is increase the margin between your overspeed and stall .

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