A JetBlue flight from Ecuador to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hit extreme turbulence while approaching the airport Monday, injuring at least eight people, including one crew member.
The airline said in a statement that JetBlue flight 1256 “experienced sudden severe turbulence as it neared Florida,” at around 5 a.m. on its way to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport from Guayaquil, Ecuador.
JetBlue said it could not comment on the severity of the injuries and it wasn’t immediately known if the injured were wearing seat belts. They were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Turbulence occurs when air flow shifts horizontally in the atmosphere in what’s called laminar flow. There are a few sources of turbulence including thunderstorms (even from miles away), wind shear and airflow from above and around mountains.
Experts say that climate change is making the kind of turbulence that occurs due to wind shear, or Clear Air Turbulence, worse.
“Turbulence is going to tend to become more frequent and more intense with climate change,” Thomas Guinn, chair of applied aviation sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told USA Today.
That’s because jet streams can trigger strong changes in wind speed and height – and are becoming more intense with climate change. However, in reality, the changes will mostly be felt as smaller instances of turbulence, not severe ones.
“The absolute amount of turbulence is small,” Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading, told USA Today. “Naught 0.1% of the atmosphere has severe turbulence in it currently; that’s tiny.”
Meaning that most people won’t experience severe turbulence, even if it’s happening more often than before.
As for this instance, JetBlue said the Airbus 320 twin-engine plane was taken out of service for inspection. The FAA also said they would investigate the incident.