Incident on VA20 This morning

[Robert S]

Originally Posted by Jayden Laing

Most pilots & cabin crew do advise that pax should have their seatbelts loosely fastened.

It's also in the safety video... "We recommend that you fasten your seatbelt whenever you are seated" and I'm pretty sure it is reinforced by a PA when the sign is switched off.

It's a bit unclear at the moment if the sign was on or off at the time... there seems to be differing reports about that.

Just a general comment - as per the last few posts, yep, it was clearly bad enough to be genuinely terrifying to some pax, but that doesn't mean the media should not be slightly more responsible in their reporting.

This said some media is worse than others. The SMH article isn't too bad and the accompanying video provides some measure to the pax reactions.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-...201-1abgd.html

The ABC article is also fairly moderate:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...01/3126404.htm

The News Limited article in the original post is clearly ludicrous by comparison... it just takes the most hysterical response and goes with that one alone, including her uninformed conclusions.

[Zac M]

I have experienced what I would class as major turbulence before and it is very scary. It was unexpected and two people were injured.

About two hours into the flight JO772 over Yap Island we experienced severe thankfully just after the service trolleys had been locked back into the galley. One man hit his head in the toilet when the plane suddenly dropped and one of my teachers (one I don't like ) was struck on the head by a suitcase falling out of an overhead locker that wasn't secured properly, thankfully almost everyone was in their seats including the crew however there was no warning from the flight deck.

Since then I pretty much freak out at the slightest hint of turbulence (now starting to get over this), I will certainly never forget that flight.

I can see in this story how the pax would have been scared however I do believe that the media sensationalize things a lot, at least this shows that they don't only report the Qantas dramas!