Severe Turbulence

[strawberrykiki]

I only fly a few times a year but I've never been scared. I'm most scared of the turbulence making people around me throw up. I cannot stand to be around anyone who is throwing up. My parents went to Hawaii a few years ago and had some pretty bad turbulence on the way home. They were sitting close to the flight attendants and they overheard them say they were scared. You know it's bad when they're scared!

[EnricoV]

Twenty years or so ago, I was on a Seattle-London flight that about an hour in, they told the attendants to take a seat, and they wouldn't let them up until about halfway through the trip. Dinner was eventually served at about midnight. It was like riding a roller coaster. Not a fun flight.

[charolastra00]

I was flying out of a fjord in Iceland from my homestay in Akureyri to Reykjavik. The puddle jumpers used in Iceland are pretty tiny - it was by far the smallest plane I had ever been in. Takeoff was a bit rough, but I had been warned. Landing, however, was horrible. My friend sitting next to me in the aisle seat had a cup of coffee in his hand, and it was so rough that he lost his grip. It hovered in the air for a few seconds before slamming into the window next me, if that's any indication. My program director was sitting behind me and held onto my shoulders because I immediately burst into tears for the rest of the flight. It was bad up until we landed.

Then, our program was to spend the final 3 weeks doing a study in the town of Isafjordur which, you guessed it, was in another fjord. What we weren't told is that the landing involved a very tight turn into the fjord (it felt like the belly of the plane was up against the fjord wall) and a rough landing. The person who greeted us was so excited that it only took us one pass to land!

The worst, however, was during an aborted landing. There was a storm and some heavy fog, and another plane was in the runway as we came down in Atlanta from Miami. The flight had been delayed about 12 hours and it was 2AM - I had been in the Miami airport since 9AM the previous day and have a phobia of flying, so I was already a mess. You could see the runway beneath us when we pitched back up, and it was very bumpy with lots of twists and turns. People on the plane were screaming.

[Resident_Crash_Lander]

I was flying from Detroit Michigan to Los Angeles when about halfway through the flight we encountered extremely sever turbulence due to the storms over the Great Lakes at that time, and a thin air patch, coupled with a pilot error. We were flying one minute, and then we started bumping around a bit, the usual turbulence, and then suddenly BOOM it hits us, it felt like we dropped 2000 feet and we must of experienced at least -1.5 G's, The pilot apologized after the fact because he was attempting to go under the storm, when this was actually the worse choice.

[John7777]

I'm not sure how "severe turbulence" is defined, but I've been on more than a few flights where the captain required that everyone remain in their seats, even the flight attendants.

Another time, on a flight from LAX to Tokyo, we hit some turbulence somewhere over the Bearing Sea. At the time, I was actually wondering if the airplane was going to break in two.

[emcee squared]

Originally Posted by John7777

I'm not sure how "severe turbulence" is defined, but I've been on more than a few flights where the captain required that everyone remain in their seats, even the flight attendants.

Another time, on a flight from LAX to Tokyo, we hit some turbulence somewhere over the Bearing Sea. At the time, I was actually wondering if the airplane was going to break in two.

Technically speaking, severe turbulence is turbulence that causes large and abrupt changes in altitude, attitude, or both. This description is followed by a duration; stated as occasional, intermittent, or continuous.