Those clips are not for the squeamish :) Years ago I was on a non-stop LA -> Helsinki, Finland flight whose course took it way up over the Arctic, quite close to the north pole. I was sitting in a window seat, and spent quite a bit of time looking out at the ice cap - quite beautiful, full of blue ice details, when viewed from 35,000 feet or so in a warm cabin. The left wing was in my view, as I was sitting aft of it. While I was watching, our aircraft hit some kind of turbulence, and we dropped very suddenly, then stopped just as suddenly. The left wing first flexed down a little, then up to a very alarming degree. Apparently quite a few of my fellow passengers were also enjoying the view, because there was a collective "Oh, shit!" that arose in perfect synchrony from dozens of throats. I couldn't believe how much that wing flexed and then suffered no damage. There was quite a mess on the plane - drinks flew everywhere, not a few laptops were destroyed, and a whole lot of luggage went flying. Nobody was badly hurt, but there were a dozen or so people with cuts and bruises, and one poor lady (who was walking down the aisle) had a broken leg...
Look at the wings flexing on the way in in the second clip!
ReplyDeleteThose clips are not for the squeamish :) Years ago I was on a non-stop LA -> Helsinki, Finland flight whose course took it way up over the Arctic, quite close to the north pole. I was sitting in a window seat, and spent quite a bit of time looking out at the ice cap - quite beautiful, full of blue ice details, when viewed from 35,000 feet or so in a warm cabin. The left wing was in my view, as I was sitting aft of it. While I was watching, our aircraft hit some kind of turbulence, and we dropped very suddenly, then stopped just as suddenly. The left wing first flexed down a little, then up to a very alarming degree. Apparently quite a few of my fellow passengers were also enjoying the view, because there was a collective "Oh, shit!" that arose in perfect synchrony from dozens of throats. I couldn't believe how much that wing flexed and then suffered no damage. There was quite a mess on the plane - drinks flew everywhere, not a few laptops were destroyed, and a whole lot of luggage went flying. Nobody was badly hurt, but there were a dozen or so people with cuts and bruises, and one poor lady (who was walking down the aisle) had a broken leg...
ReplyDelete