Geez, that's one hell of a belting. Imagine F with all that Krug dripping from the ceiling,
Better it drip from the ceiling than being hit by the bottle.
What I mean is I would happily pay $50 for a "safer" airline given with a good safety track record. I mean it is the most rational choice as opposed to a more budget-conscious choice which is also rational considering which variable you value more: safety versus money? I would trust a company that is too big to fail to take all precautions from these types of situations happening. As for other companies that could dissolve any minute probably less so.
I think it's hard to argue that this situation could have been better handled by almost any other airline.
Sure, we can comment post facto easily... i.e. of course you should have never flown through that area with the weather they had there. Even easier to say so when you're not a pilot or aviator yourself.
In a lot of cases, a good aviation culture is somewhat taking precautions but more
responding to adverse incidents effectively. The latter seems what a lot of pilot simulator trainings are for.
No point speculating. Seatbelts help but they won't save you from a 7kg backpack to the head if someone else has stood up and is getting their bag out at the wrong time.
Sending best to the passengers, I'm sure it has been a very traumatic experience, most of all for the relatives of the deceased.
And that's
if the backpack was actually 7 kg. We all know that the average weight is likely more than that (some are probably as heavy as checked bags).
Let's be honest, nearly no average person can take a 7 kg conk on the head without some damage.
Geoffrey Thomas says severe turbulence has increased by 55% over the past 40 years because of climate change. Obviously the BoB is a bit of a hot spot.
Questioned how the on board radar didn't pick up the severity of the storm involved, and why the pilots couldn't get around it.
I thought I read in the "Ask a Pilot" thread once that radars detect weather and storm cells but it doesn't really give a strong indication of how bad that weather region might be in terms of turbulence. You could fly through stormy weather and be relatively fine, whereas another area (which may not have storms) is quite choppy. And then there's an argument for how long the turbulence could be (you might be fine taking a bit of chop for 2 minutes, as opposed to something that might be more sustained).
I thought I remember reading that turbulence (and/or avoiding the hot zones) tends to be more from listening to other pilot reports than just relying on the weather radar alone. You could take the cautious approach and never fly through any stormy areas, but I suspect that would be impractical, and I don't think this would avoid any turbulence at all, even bad ones like this.
Then there's the whole inertia in requesting a change in the flight path. The pilots would have had to have been very convinced that this was a really bad idea before requesting to change course, rather than plough through (or rather change course
only once they realised how bad the weather really was). Sure, this time, it was likely the wrong decision, and the pilots may well be paying for this with their careers or their lives.