A332, en-route, near Bangka Island Indonesia, 2016

A332, en-route, near Bangka Island Indonesia, 2016

Summary

On 4 May 2016, an Airbus A330-200 in the cruise in day VMC at FL390 in the vicinity of a highly active thunderstorm cell described by the crew afterwards as ‘cumulus cloud’ encountered a brief episode of severe clear air turbulence which injured 24 passengers and crew, seven of them seriously as well as causing some damage to cabin fittings and equipment. The Investigation was unable to determine how close to the cloud the aircraft had been but noted the absence of proactive risk management and that most of the injured occupants had not been secured in their seats.

Description

On 4 May 2016, an Airbus A330-200 (A6-EYN) being operated by Etihad Airways on a scheduled international passenger flight from Abu Dhabi to Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta with an augmented crew and in the cruise at FL 390 in day VMC encountered a very brief period of severe turbulence which was not anticipated by the flight crew. One member of the cabin crew and six passengers sustained serious injuries and three cabin crew and 14 passengers sustained minor injuries. There was also some damage to the cabin interior. As the flight was nearing its destination, it was decided that the flight would continue as planned and the seriously injured passengers were hospitalised on arrival.

The location where the turbulence episode occurred. [Reproduced from the Official Report]

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC/KNKT). Data from the 1172-parameter FDR and the 2 hour CVR were successfully downloaded and used to support the Investigation.

The full content of this page is available to registered users only.
Please Log in or Register

SKYbrary Partners:

Safety knowledge contributed by: