IATA director general Willie Walsh says the association will assess recent high-profile turbulence events, but flags existing efforts to better understand and help airlines counter the problem.
The issue of turbulence has made headlines after last month’s high-profile incident on a Singapore Airlines flight, which left one passenger dead, as well as several others seriously injured.
”Turbulence is not a new issue,” Walsh said during a press conference at the IATA AGM in Dubai on 3 June. “It has been a factor in the industry for many years. Obviously we continue to assess the recent events to understand it better and see if there is anything else that can be done. But there is a lot done [already].”
IATA itself has its Turbulence Aware platform, which Emirates became the latest carrier to sign up to at the end of May. ”What Turbulence Aware does is it takes take from the aircraft in real-time, so if there is a turbulence event, it will record it,” says Walsh. ”It will then send details to other aircraft that are connected to the system to make them aware of the extent of the turbulence.”
Speaking on 2 June, Emirates president Tim Clark said his carrier had observed an increase in turbulence incidents.