How many feet is the plane actually moving up or down, and side to side? I kept a close watch on the altimeter. Fewer than forty feet, either way, is what I saw. Ten or twenty feet, if that, most of the time. Any change in heading—that is, the direction our nose was pointed—was all but undetectable. I imagine some passengers saw it differently, overestimating the roughness by orders of magnitude. “We dropped like 3,000 feet in two seconds!”
Here's the thin to keep in mind. These planes are designed to fly through the worst weather you can imagine.
The safety testing is to ensure the plane can fly through hurricane weather and severe storms. However, passenger aviation isn't just about getting you from point a to point b in one piece. It's also to do so comfortably. That's why planes change altitudes and headings to avoid turbulence and bad weather.
However, the weather in the sky, is like the weather on the land. Mostly predicable but sometimes unexpected patterns emerge, sometimes clearances close, and sometimes avoiding a storm isn't plausible.
Jbo, like you I get over fear through education (I know people that are so scared they can't even educate themselves on a topic).
Here's a trick I leaned when I was in high school landing in Montréal. The plane was shaking, jolting up and down. I was getting really worried. I looked up and saw a pilot who was deadheading (I'm assuming) just sitting calmly as if he was reading a book and sipping a tea. I thought "if he's not worried, why should I be?" Then we landed safely.
I've been on a landing that bad only once since then. Landing in Sydney during a snowstorm. The plane again shaking violently, up and down and all around. As the older gentlemen next to me grapes the arm rests tightly, I leaned over, took a package of gum out of my backpack, took a piece, turned to the man next to me and said "would you like a piece". He looked at me and with panic in his voice he said "This is no time for gum!!!!" Then he burst out laughing, which caused the tension in the back of the plane to break as everyone within ear shot giggled, then we landed safely and taxied to the gate.
At the end of the day these guys fly those machines hundreds of times. They know their sounds, their feel, and really know the aircraft. It's like how you know your own car. It's not some 16 year old with a learners permit at the helm, even if they are young, they've got a lot of flight time to be flying for Air Canada or WestJet.
So worry not, and if you're really nervous. Here's another trick I used to get over my fear of driving with one of my best friends who was possibly the worst driver I've ever been in a car with… get drunk. I you're drunk you won't care and just go along with the percentages.
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Facilities at YYC with Air Canada being much more than those other two choices. Especially from a maintenance standpoint to assess and repair the aircraft if necessary.
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So as a few members know on here, I am a wuss when it comes to flying. Of course, I fly out to Denver tomorrow, and the whole Air Canada thing has my anxiety up.
As I know there are a ton of aviation experts in this thread, curious about a couple questions.
1) How often does severe turbulance actually occur in commercial flying? It seems like you hear about it every couple of years. Is it quite rare?
2) Everyone says turbulance is normal and is no actual danger to the plane, yet you hear about how turbulance can damage the plane...can anyone provide some clarification on this for me.
Sorry for the worry-wort post, but I find education is usually the best tool to deal with this stuff.
Pilots in North America report Severe Turbulence every single day. Injuries are less frequent. Keep your seatbelt fastened tightly and you'll be fine.
--Light turbulence is the least severe, with slight, erratic changes in attitude and/or altitude.
--Moderate turbulence is similar to light turbulence, but of greater intensity - variations in speed as well as altitude and attitude may occur but the aircraft remains in control all the time.
--Severe turbulence is characterized by large, abrupt changes in attitude and altitude with large variations in airspeed. There may be brief periods where effective control of the aircraft is impossible. Loose objects may move around the cabin and damage to aircraft structures may occur.
--Extreme turbulence is capable of causing structural damage and resulting directly in prolonged, possibly terminal, loss of control of the aircraft.
If this scale is the metric, it'd be fair to say that turbulence is often overrated by media. In any event, it's interesting while controlling because basically your job is to keep people out of it. The problem is that different aircraft are affected by it differently, and the boxes in the back of FedEx and UPS planes have a bad habit of underrating it. Had a United 747 captain pretty unhappy with me after I sent him through what a FedEx MD-11 told me was "occasional light" but was more like continuous moderate.
I could be wrong on this, but the way I think about turbulence is to compare it to a boat going through waves. I am sure it is a pretty similar principle, the air current is similar to the surface of the ocean. The plane feels like it's bouncing up and down to you, but in reality it's riding up and down on the air current, similar the way a boat would on waves. Just like a boat captain avoids stormy or rough seas by changing course, a plane captain can do the same by changing altitude or course. Like everyone has said planes are built to withstand turbulence and although it may be uncomfortable to you, the plane doesn't care one bit.
Here's a perfect example of why people are terrified of turbulence...media.
"...Surprisingly common..."
Quote:
As airline passengers continue receiving treatment in a Calgary hospital for injuries sustained during extreme turbulence, Transport Canada reveals there have been 81 other cases of on-board injuries in the past 10 years.
Quote:
John Pottinger, an aviation safety consultant who investigated accidents and dozens of other incidents at Transport Canada, said airline travel remains “extremely safe,” but he noted injuries from turbulence are “surprisingly common.”
81 cases out of 540,000 is .00003333% - SURPRISINGLY COMMON????
What I'm sure this expert meant is that he's surprised in cases of extreme turbulence how many people are actually injured, but the Herald writer spins it into a terrifying story about injuries and turbulence that is sooooooo common. A very misleading story.
That's media for you, and why some people are terrified.
A few thoughts on the turbulence thing.....when is the last time you remember an airplane 'crashing' due to turbulence? It's like thinking cars crash when they drive on bumpy roads.
The primary risk with turbulence is to unsecured people inside the airplane, not to the safety of the flight itself. Now that risk is legitimate, in that we can't keep everyone strapped in for the entire flight. Much of the time the air is smooth, and even when it is bumpy, it isn't usually enough to cause objects to fly around inside the cabin. So we manage the risk as much as we can using weather forecasts and reports form other aircraft to identify rough air in advance and get everyone belted in ahead of time. The difficulty is that weather is unpredictable at times, so occasionally you can end up with an incident like the AC 777 the other night.
My best suggestion, and I do this when I'm a passenger, is to wear my seat belt whenever I'm sitting down, even when the seat belt sign is off and it is smooth. Simple and cheap insurance should we hit unexpected turbulence.
But to repeat, it is exceedingly rare that turbulence is capable of causing an aircraft accident.
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Many people also think that the act of an airplane flying through the air is much more of a tight rope walk than it actually is, as though the jolts felt during turbulence could toss the plane off balance and out of the air all of the sudden. If there's airspeed, you're flying, and it is certainly very akin to the fluid properties of something like driving a boat on a lake, as someone mentioned. Aircraft also come packaged with a "rough air penetration" speed to which most pilots will slow in the event of significant turbulence. At this speed, the airplane is engineered to take a shellacking.
It sounds cliched, but the road's a far scarier place to be than the air generally...even when an item or two flies about the cabin.
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I'm your white knuckle passenger when it comes to turbulance. I can handle a little bit but when the seatbelt sign comes on i get jittery.
My question is, can anybody recommend a really good up to date turbulance map or website? If i can see where the turbulance will be and prepare myself mentally i might handle it better.
Reading last night's american airlines turbulance off newfoundland didn't help. The other severe one in alaska a few weeks ago didn't help either.
Click here for exactly what you're looking for. CAT is clear air turbulence, the kind you can't really see coming but there are ways to forecast it to an extent, and that's what you see on the map, but if we could always see it coming, nobody would ever hit it. Stay buckled up and hope for the best is really all you can do, as the odds of hitting anything really bad are very low. Also realize your captain/ATC are doing everything in their power to avoid it, at least that which they know about.
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