Worst turbulence you've experienced?

I remember the first "bad" turbulence I experienced was flying over Afghanistan from Thailand I think in 2006. It was non stop for about 2 hours and the plane was shaking a lot. Been on probably ~100 flights since then, with some that had much worse turbulence, but you get used to it. It can still make your stomach go a bit queasy though! The worst I've ever experienced was in an ATR-72 flying from Boracay to Manila, just after a tropical storm had past.
 
Suarez7 said:
After watching that Horizon program and seeing how much force wings on a plane can withstand I don't think I'll worry about it again. Flight back from Ibiza had turbulence practically all the way back and some people looked pretty worried, only thing that annoyed me was I couldn't sleep through it.
Click to expand...

I'm usually worried about my health in other ways on the way back from Ibiza :p
 
The worst turbulence I've ever been through was an easyJet flight to Greece, no warning, a sudden and relatively sharp drop. Probably wasn't anything significant to the pilot or crew, but the drunk chap next to me tasted his beer again. That was the worst part.

XeNoN89 said:
I have a friend who experienced something similar on a flight to Australia, apparently the plane suddenly dropped a couple thousand feet...
Click to expand...

No. No, it didn't.

http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/turbulence/

I remember one night, headed to Europe, hitting some unusually rough air about halfway across the Atlantic. It was the kind of turbulence people tell their friends about. It came out of nowhere and lasted several minutes, and was bad enough to knock over carts in the galleys. During the worst of it, to the sound of crashing plates, I recalled an email. A reader had asked me about the displacement of altitude during times like this. 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!”
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Another vote for sudden free fall, with some heavy shaking around after and then another drop, flying Bangkok to Shanghai. Couldn't guess how far in total, probably not all that much, but enough for me and the guy next to me to turn to each other and do a very English slight raising of eyebrows, while everyone else was busy screaming :p
 
The worst turbulence I've had was on the way back from Greece a couple of years ago. It probably wasn't that bad, but I was very hung over at the time. It felt like the world was falling apart and crashing into my head.
 
Feef said:
Another vote for sudden free fall, with some heavy shaking around after and then another drop, flying Bangkok to Shanghai. Couldn't guess how far in total, probably not all that much, but enough for me and the guy next to me to turn to each other and do a very English slight raising of eyebrows, while everyone else was busy screaming :p
Click to expand...

Ha :D made me giggle.

Worst turbulence I've experienced was flying from California to North Carolina, mid way through the flight for about 20-30 minutes it felt like the plane was in the hands of a small child being waved about frantically. The cabin crew were just laughing.... so that made it more comforting... :eek:
 
I think for me it was the reentry into earth after my recent trip to mars via Dubai where I stayed in a 7 star hotel via new york where I stayed for 4 weeks courtesy of Mr Bloomberg.
 
Even with the knowledge that turbulence is perfectly survivable, I absolutely hate it, all sorts of thoughts go through my head and I am literally imagining the worst at all times :(
 
Only time we had bad turbulence was flying through a storm to Tunisia, felt like the plane suddenly dropped a far amount, it did make me pucker up.
 
Attempting to pull more than 4.5G coming out of a loop count?

More likely any of my landings, boing boing boing...

Worst "I fly planes" post ever?
 
Turbulence only worries me because I get heavily motion sick. Even a rough landing is enough to send me diving me for the sick bag.

I'm such a big jessy, always fearful incase I'm sick on the plane. Hasn't happened yet *touch wood* but there's been a few near cases of project vomiting.

I'd love to understand why I'm affected by motion sickness so badly whereas the other 95% of the passengers are totally fine and continue eating/drinking/sleeping. Must be an imbalance in my body :p
 
I'd advise any nervous flyers to watch that new Horizon program, I'm pretty okay with it but it reinforced some of my concerns. Some of the stories it shows from back in the 50's though makes me wonder how air travel was even allowed but without those tragedies we wouldn't have the safety we do today.
 
Upon landing in Aberdeen, the pilot told us we've just had 4 landings for the price of one, strong crosswind plus bad weather = plane aproaching the runway basically sideways.
 
Flight from Manchester to Schipol a few years ago, weather wasn't anything too rough, just a bit choppy as we got closer to landing. changed to bumpy as hell on final approach, at about 400ft or so the left wing dipped alarmingly so he nailed it and went round for a second attempt.

He aborted the second attempt at approx 50ft for the same reason (we were over the runway :p) and went round again. This time he announced over the tannoy (KLM flight, so imagine a comedy Dutch accent) "hey everybody, as you may have noticed we are having difficultly landing. Don't worry though, we have plenty of fuel for more attempts". By this time people are filling sickbags left right and centre, the woman in front of me is wearing out her rosary beads and there are moans and cries from all over the plane.

He finally got it down on the third attempt. No idea what it looked like from the outside, but I'd imagine Maverick slamming an F14 into the deck of the Nimitz would be fairly accurate :D
 
Goliath said:
He aborted the second attempt at approx 50ft for the same reason (we were over the runway :p) and went round again. This time he announced over the tannoy (KLM flight, so imagine a comedy Dutch accent) "hey everybody, as you may have noticed we are having difficultly landing. Don't worry though, we have plenty of fuel for more attempts". By this time people are filling sickbags left right and centre, the woman in front of me is wearing out her rosary beads and there are moans and cries from all over the plane.
Click to expand...

Made me laugh, those crazy Dutch pilots on KLM!
 
Had some pretty bad turbulence, not as bad as what some of you have described though...

Most recent was a few years ago flying from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, hit a bad stretch on turbulence but what made it worse was that it made some babies cry and seemed to last forever.
 
i've been blessed in all the flights ive been on the turbulence has been almost zero...ive been living under the delusion that because the aircraft flies above the weather its only when landing (or before reaching your cruise altitude) you experience turbulence. I love landings anyway as long as i can see the ground doesnt bother me how the plane gets down there. Takeoffs are scary for me though hate them....

Always take prescription drugs before i fly anyway wont get on a plane without diazepam.
 
A couple of times I've be thankful of seatbelts otherwise everyone would be thrown against the ceiling violently.

Worst I had was In a small 2 seated plan, negative ground speed despite the engine maxed out and we dropped a few thousand feet in less than 10 seconds as a fohn wind ripped out from no where, canopy warning light switched on so I had to lean forward a and hold the canopy lock down which was near impossible with the g-force. My vision was blackening out slightly but luckily my pilot buddy was holding up better and pulled us out
 
Crossing the Himalayas in the back of a 747 was pretty bumpy for quite a while. Looking forward to the 777 doing the reverse later this week...

The pilot of the Emirates A380 into Auckland last week hit the deck pretty hard too...

Nothing strong enough to get people sick/zero g!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom