Staying safe during flight turbulence: Simon Calder explainsSource: Simon Calder
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00:00The news that eight people have been significantly injured when a Ryanair flight from Berlin to Milan
00:08struck turbulence over southern Germany will be very worrying for a lot of people.
00:15After all, it would be great if pilots were able to identify when there was going to be some very unstable air and avoid it.
00:25Well, they absolutely do whenever they can, but sometimes, as we see from time to time, there is simply nothing that can be done.
00:37Except, if you're a passenger, you can follow the regime of just staying strapped in at all times,
00:45except when you're moving around the cabin, because that way, while it can be extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant
00:52to be involved in severe turbulence, you are much less likely to be hurt.
00:59And while, understandably, some of the passengers' accounts say,
01:05well, we thought we were going to die,
01:07I can absolutely sympathise with people who are feeling that this is a really terrible situation.
01:14Bear in mind that modern aircraft are designed to cope with turbulence,
01:18and also, Ryanair, the airline involved, is the safest airline in the world in 40 years.
01:26It has flown well over a billion passengers without any of them dying in an accident.
01:33That is a remarkable record, and I am very happy to fly on Ryanair,
01:38or any other excellent European or other airline which knows what it is doing,
01:45and that is the vast majority of them, aviation safety is absolutely paramount.