Large planes can handle turbulence, but flights are set to get bumpier

Climate change will be a challenge for aviation, though commercial aircraft are generally equipped to handle it.

- Ven Sreenivasan

Air turbulence is a common phenomenon on international flights.

Most airline passengers would experience some bumpiness during some parts of their journey. Some instances of turbulence can be more severe than others.

That said, what happened aboard Singapore Airlines' Flight SQ321 from London to Singapore was highly unusual.

The history of commercial aviation suggests that while severe air turbulence has caused injuries among passengers, fatalities are relatively rare. This is because pilots have ample time to warn passengers to buckle up when they detect their planes approaching stormy skies or areas of unstable weather.

Before the incident on May 21 when SQ321 encountered severe turbulence, the last fatality on a scheduled commercial flight was on board a United Airlines flight from Tokyo to Honolulu in 1997, when a passenger died after being thrown from her seat during severe turbulence.

Still, the US National Transportation Safety Board has recorded more than 100 injuries and dozens of deaths over the past decades on US domestic flights. But these fatalities occurred when extreme turbulence resulted in small planes crashing. No commercial aircraft is known to have crashed purely as a result of turbulence.