In December of 2022, Flight UA1722 from Maui to San Francisco was reported by media to have plunged half of its altitude in a matter of seconds due to severe turbulence. Just last week, a Lufthansa flight from Austin, TX to Germany reportedly fell thousands of feet, sending seven people to the hospital for injuries after an emergency landing.
Is this just sensationalized reporting by the media, or do commercial jets actually plummet from the sky and recover just before crashing? Why and how does this happen?
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While it is possible for downdrafts to cause an airplane to lose substantial altitude, this is rare. Injuries from turbulence usually occur when atmospheric disturbances are strong enough to cause significant downward *acceleration* followed by sudden upward *acceleration*. The downward acceleration lifts unsecured passengers out of their seats, then the sudden upward acceleration slams them back down again, usually after they rotate to awkward orientations. In such cases, the airplane may have gained or lost fewer than 100 feet in altitude.
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