With severe injuries from turbulence on a recent Singapore Airlines flight, questions abound over why airplanes encounter this phenomenon and whether climate change really will make it worse.
Air travel is safer than you might think, despite the publicity surrounding the recent Singapore Airlines incident. Here’s what’s going on to distort your perception of risk.
U.S. airlines carry more than 800 million passengers per year.
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People have been flying airplanes for well over a century. Engineers know how to balance all the forces at play, but still aren’t exactly sure how some of the physics of flight actually works.
Without a point of reference, it can be hard to tell just how fast an airplane is traveling.
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Over the past 60 years, the duration of flights has remained roughly the same, while passengers have been subjected to more indignities, longer waits and more cancellations.
Cloud seeding – spraying materials into clouds to increase precipitation – has been around for nearly 80 years. But only recently have scientists been able to measure how effective it really is.
Nearly 7,000 flights were canceled in the U.S. on Jan. 11, 2023.
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The Notices to Air Mission system failed on Jan. 10, 2023, leading to thousands of canceled flights. The system is where all important safety information for pilots and dispatchers gets posted.
No, you’re not imagining it. Your body does some weird things up in the air. Here’s a guide to the common and merely embarrassing to the rare, but serious.
Is it true our phones are dangerous for aircraft navigation? An expert explains.
The hijacking of U.S. aircraft – like the three hijacked in 1970 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – made it impossible for American policymakers to ignore the threat.
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From 1968 to 1974, US airlines experienced 130 hijackings. But it was Cooper’s hijacking-as-extortion plot that captured the public’s imagination – and inspired a copycat crime wave.
Despite the halt to the federal mask mandate for mass transit, people may still choose to protect themselves. For those who do, the type of mask and how well it fits matter.
When planes fly from east to west, they are flying against a river of air called a jet stream. These air currents can make your flight longer or shorter, depending on which way you are going.
For anyone thinking about traveling during the pandemic, COVID-19 testing can be an important, but not all-powerful, tool.
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Over the approaching holidays, people around the world will want to travel to see friends and family. Getting tested for the coronavirus can make this safer, but testing alone is not a perfect answer.
Trucks, planes and storage facilities all need to be able to keep a vaccine cold.
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The cold supply chain keeps vaccines fresh during distribution, but the current system is nowhere near large enough to distribute the billions of COVID-19 vaccines that the world needs.
Professor, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century; ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, The University of Melbourne