A former Australian Air Force and Qantas pilot with more than three decades of experience flying passenger aircraft has shared his theory on what happened aboard a fatal Singapore Airlines flight.
Retired pilot Richard Woodward believes Singapore flight SQ321 from London to Singapore ran directly into a thunderstorm on May 21 this year.
Flight radar images show other planes flying over Myanmar – where flight SQ321 ran into catastrophic turbulence, claiming the life of a British man Geoff Kitchen, 73, from a suspected heart attack and injuring 104 passengers and crew – avoided building storm activity.
However, SQ321 stayed true to its intended path and headed straight into the thick of the storm.
Mr Woodward called the decision ‘a terrible miscalculation’.
Looking at the radar images, he told 60 Minutes on Sunday: ‘They’re showing [storm] cells developing all over southern Myanmar, so a big area of thunderstorm activity.
‘Of course, you’d either be going down the coast and swinging around or picking your way through the cells, but you certainly wouldn’t try and fly downwind of the thing because that’s where the weather’s getting blown to.’
As the plane went from ‘massive updraft to a massive downdraft’, the impact caused passengers and staff not wearing seatbelts to slam into overhead cabin lockers.
Retired pilot Richard Woodward (pictured) on Sunday shared his theory that Singapore flight SQ321 from London to Singapore ran directly into a thunderstorm on May 21
Flight radar images (above) from the incident show other planes flying over Myanmar avoided building storm activity. However, SQ321 (shown in red) stayed true to its intended path and headed straight into the thick of the cell
‘The airplane falls effectively falls 178ft, which puts everyone who’s not strapped in on the roof in the back of the airplane and you pin there while the airplane’s falling,’ Mr Woodward explained.
‘But within a couple of seconds it goes back to positive G-force and you bang back down to whatever’s below you – seat backs, seats floor, you name it, whack – it’s all over in 4.6 seconds.
‘It’s unheard of to get that sort of damage in that time.’
Mr Woodward believes pilots may have misjudged the strength of the storm system and attempted to fly over it.
‘I think in their view, this is benign area and they think they can just over fly it, keep going,’ he said.
Many media outlets initially reported the flight had been subject to ‘clear air turbulence’, a rare phenomenon which sees strong turbulence suddenly hit aircraft with little visual warning.
However, Mr Woodward said clear air turbulence is ‘very rare’ in tropical areas such as Myanmar, and that the pilots on SQ321 should have been able to see lightning from the storm.
Four months on, there’s still no explanation as to why SQ321 would have flown into it without any deviation.
‘That’s the profound question and we don’t know the answer to that,’ Mr Woodward said.
Kerry Jordan’s spine was broken when she was thrust up from her seat, into an overhead cabin (pictured, Ms Jordan with her partner, Keith Davis)
‘The crew would be seeing all these cells developing on the radar and weighing up whether they need to go around it or not, but it appears from the fact that they’re not deviating, they think they can fit through.
‘You don’t get to sit in the front of a big airliner unless you’ve done years and years of training, but we don’t know what was going on in the flight deck and we don’t know what they were looking at.’
Twelves Australians were among the 211 passengers onboard.
The ill-fated flight changed South Australian Kerry Jordan’s life forever, who was returning home from the ‘best ever holiday’ with her partner Keith Davis.
She had just returned to her seat after a trip to the bathroom when the turbulence hit.
The extreme turbulence on SQ321 injured more than 100 passengers and crew (pictured)
Ms Jordan’s spine was broken when she was thrust up from her seat, into an overhead cabin.
The horrific injury saw Ms Jordan, a dance teacher, paralysed from the waist down and bound to a wheelchair, likely for the rest of her life.
She has been in hospital since the ordeal and is currently unable to return to her home due to accessibility issues.
‘The challenge of, you know, being able to actually get up and get ready for the day, that’s huge, you know?’ she said.
Ms Jordan and her partner claim that they were offered $75,000 compensation from Singapore Airlines and that its lawyers have requested ‘proof of hardship.’
When asked what he believed the cause of the extreme turbulence was, Mr Davis said: ‘Someone took their eyes off the dial… what else can I think?
‘If you put yourself in a situation that could have been avoided by diverting… when you’re hearing information that other flights that are in the air at the same time in the same region are doing exactly that, it just beggars belief.
‘The data doesn’t lie.’
Ms Jordan (pictured), a dance teacher, was paralysed from the waist down and bound to a wheelchair, likely for the rest of her life
A Singapore Airlines spokesperson said the carrier ‘apologises to all passengers for the traumatic experience on board SQ321’.
The added that the airline is fully cooperating with the Singapore Transport Safety Investigation Bureau inquiry.
‘We are discussing the compensation details directly with the affected passengers or their appointed representatives,’ the spokesperson said.
‘Singapore Airlines is committed to providing all necessary support and assistance to the passengers who were on board SQ321.’
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