Severe turbulence caused a Singapore Airlines plane to make an emergency landing in Bangkok on Tuesday. One person died in the incident and many others were injured.

Almost every air traveler knows the unpleasant jerking and slumping up and down above the clouds. The plane hit turbulence. Although the shaking is unpleasant, there is no danger of crashing because aircraft are designed to withstand even the most aggressive turbulence.

The greater danger lurks on the plane. Severe turbulence can cause objects, including passengers who are not wearing seatbelts, to be thrown around the cabin.

Singapore Airlines passengers also had to experience this on Tuesday. According to the airline, the Boeing 777-300ER took off from London and encountered severe turbulence on the way. The plane sank around 2,000 meters. One person died in the incident and 104 people were reportedly injured.

There is always turbulence. In March 2023, passengers from Lufthansa and Condor were also affected when their aircraft were hit by so-called clear air turbulence. These are particularly dangerous because they can occur without warning and out of the blue.

There are also turbulences that the crew can take into account when planning the flight. They result from measurable weather phenomena such as storms or thunderstorms.

But the degree to which turbulence is perceived also depends on where you sit in the plane. The vibrations are particularly noticeable in the middle of the plane. The front rows are better than the back rows.

But there are also routes that are particularly affected. This includes flights that take you over mountains. Air becomes turbulent as it moves over a mountaintop. But flights over the North Atlantic due to the jet stream and connections that cross the equator are also more affected by turbulence.

The portal turbli.com specializes in predicting turbulence and has created a ranking of the most turbulent flight routes worldwide. To do this, the company analyzed over 150,000 long-haul and short-haul flight records from the past year.

The strength of turbulence is given in the vortex dissipation rate or Eddy Dissipation Rate (EDR). The levels range from mild (0-20) to moderate (20-40) to (40-80) and extreme (80-100).

EDR quantifies the intensity of turbulence in the atmosphere, but not its probability and is not dependent on the aircraft type. In 2023, the route with the highest intensity of turbulence worldwide was in South America.

Travelers flying from Santiago de Chile to Santa Cruz, Bolivia were particularly shaken. The EDR is at 17.658. Internationally, the route between the Kazakh metropolis of Almaty and the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek comes in second place. The internal Chinese route from Lanzhou to Chengdu takes third place.

But what does it all look like in Europe? One thing in advance. The Swiss are hit particularly hard here. For eight of the ten European flight routes affected by turbulence, the departure or destination airport is in Switzerland.

The original for this article “Horror flight with dead and injured people – these are the most turbulent routes in Europe” comes from aeroTelegraph.