Flying is considered one of the safest forms of transportation, but everybody who steps on a plane is uneasy on some level.
That’s what says Patrick Smith, an active airline pilot, air travel blogger and author of the book ‘Cockpit confidential: everything you need to know about air travel.’
Turbulence in particular is one of the main concerns of anxious passengers. But is it actually dangerous?
Last week I decided to visit my brother who lives in a city six hours away from mine (by car). Since there was a major airline ticket sale, I decided to fly instead and get there faster. About three hours before my flight, just as I was packing up, the sky turned dark. I could hear the wind blowing on my window and it was clear that a powerful storm was brewing.
I checked to see if my flight had gotten cancelled, but it hadn’t. Although the flight was delayed by about half an hour, I was still able to fly that day.
Shortly after taking off, a flight attendant announced that people should remain on their seats with their seatbelts fastened (never a good sign). Then she said food and beverages would not be served during flight due to “unstable weather conditions” (definitely not a good sign).
Just when I thought that the flight attendant might have been overreacting, the plane found a rough patch and it became clear why no food was being served.
The plane was violently shaking from side to side, losing altitude drastically (or at least it felt like it), and it lasted several minutes (or maybe it was just a few seconds; it’s hard to tell when you’re sweating, desperately holding tight to your seat and praying).
It was the kind of turbulence that makes people stare at each other wondering if the plane will crash. When it passed, we all smiled at each other in relief and some people attempted to lighten up the mood by making a few jokes (Okay, maybe it was just me).
In his website askthepilot.com, Smith says that although it’s easy to picture the airplane as a helpless dinghy in a stormy sea, a plane cannot be flipped upside-down, thrown into a tailspin or flung from the sky by even the mightiest gust or air pocket. Although turbulence may be scary, Smith assures anxious flyers that pilots do not consider turbulence a dangerous occurrence.
“Turbulence is an aggravating nuisance for everybody, including the crew, but it’s also, for lack of a better term, normal,” he says. “From a pilot’s perspective, it is ordinarily seen as a convenience issue, not a safety issue; when a flight changes altitude in search of smoother conditions, this is by and large in the interest of comfort; the pilots aren’t worried about the wings falling off, they’re trying to keep their customers relaxed and everybody’s coffee where it belongs.”
I don’t know about you, but I loved reading that (In fact, I might take his book with me next time I’m on a plane).
Smith also says that, during turbulence, passengers tend to overestimate the roughness by orders of magnitude. Although it can feel like the plane is losing dramatic altitude at times, altitude, bank, and pitch will change only slightly during turbulence.
“In the cockpit we see just a twitch on the altimeter,” says Smith.
Most of the time, planes will only move up or down about 10 or 20 feet during turbulence.
The reality is that airplanes are engineered to withstand a remarkable amount of punishment, so although turbulence can feel like the end of times, they are no reason for concern.