Turbulence

securespark said:
The first time I flew long distance was in 1981
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The first time I went on a proper airplane was a 12 hour flight to Cape Town. I thought it would never end.

carmanmemoranda said:
1 Thing to think about that might help. If it's the fear of crashing etc that scares you.

The people that sit up front and fly the thing, want to get to their destination safely too
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Whenever I'm on a plane and there is some turbulence, I always watch the flight attendants. If they are still trying to serve tea and sell you some perfume, I relax a little. I don’t know what I’d do if they ran to their seats and buckled up!
 
Mottie said:
Christ, that must have been some turbulence and pretty scary too.

www.bbc.co.uk

Singapore Airlines: Passengers recall horror onboard flight

One passenger said he heard a woman "screaming in agony" and saw another with a "gash on her head".
www.bbc.co.uk

I’ve never experienced severe turbulence on a plane but my sister told me once that on a flight to America the plane was dropping like a stone and rising just as quick. Her seat belt held her in place but some people had head/neck injuries when they hit the overhead lockers and the flight attendants were having to hold the serving trolleys down!
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We had some fairly bad turbulence last year, we ended up landing in Malaga and not Alicante.

I’d had a few airport pints so it wasn’t as terrifying as it could have been
 
Mottie said:
Whenever I'm on a plane and there is some turbulence, I always watch the flight attendants. If they are still trying to serve tea and sell you some perfume, I relax a little. I don’t know what I’d do if they ran to their seats and buckled up!
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I've experienced that.

They announced expected turbulence and said service would resume then. As it happened we felt 2 or 3 bumps. Nothing out the ordinary.

Wouldn't fancy a bad case like this plane had.
 
securespark said:
The first time I flew long distance was in 1981. I flew in a Singapore Airlines 747 in 1981 to Singapore (Paya Lebar), then an MAS 737 to Kuching.

It was on the second flight that the pilot could not avoid a thunderstorm and had to fly through it. We had just had breakfast when the plane began lurching around. This carried on for about 20 minutes. Luckily we had our belts on. Then the plane plummeted hugely. It was weird because the plane stayed more or less horizontal, but lost a whole heap of altitude. Needless to say, quite a few of us deposited our breakfasts in the bags provided.
It was a bit awkward handing our bags to the steward on the way out of the plane!

It was bl0ody scary!
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About 35 years ago a friend of mine was flying back from Singapore when the plane dropped several thousand feet in a very short space of time, they called it clear air turbulence. Anyone who wasn't strapped in was pinned to the ceiling, about half a dozen people had broken limbs. They stopped somewhere of other for a safety check on the aircraft and they were offered hospital treatment, when the injured saw a stewardess with a broken arm elect to carry on to London, the passengers followed suit and stayed on the plane. There was no build up to it, no storm, no turbulence, just the plane suddenly dropping like a stone until it hit 'solid air' again. Apparently it was a fairly common occurence in that area.
 
Forget jet plane turbulence, try being in a DC3 helping drop grass seeds/fertilisers at about 200 feet!
 
Try CAT or vicious wind shear in the Oz outback many miles from anything when piloting a little helicopter. It's like being sent spinning and tumbling by a giant bat. All you can do is hope nothing important falls off and that you're high enough. The first time it happened to me I was with an instructor. He put it down asap and we got out and sat on a rock. Nothing to say. It was his first time too. It gave us both nightmares for a while.
My second time was very remote but less violent, but it did put me off flying them a bit.
 
securespark said:
The first time I flew long distance was in 1981. I flew in a Singapore Airlines 747 in 1981 to Singapore (Paya Lebar), then an MAS 737 to Kuching.

It was on the second flight that the pilot could not avoid a thunderstorm and had to fly through it. We had just had breakfast when the plane began lurching around. This carried on for about 20 minutes. Luckily we had our belts on. Then the plane plummeted hugely. It was weird because the plane stayed more or less horizontal, but lost a whole heap of altitude. Needless to say, quite a few of us deposited our breakfasts in the bags provided.
It was a bit awkward handing our bags to the steward on the way out of the plane!

It was bl0ody scary!
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Not had turbulence anything like as bad as that before, but I'm always amazed (and relieved) that the massive forces on the fuselage don't seem to cause any damage.

Only incident I've had was once landing at Prague airport at night, plane touched down very hard on only starboard side wheels and lurched to that side and pilot stepped on the gas and aborted landing. Was a little surprised, because no warning of anything untoward until touchdown. Passengers began talking nervously to other passengers that they had ignored all flight. Flew around a bit, then made a second landing without any problems. Once again, I was impressed that the first landing didn't seem to have done any damage.
 
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