Ten Things You Need To Know About Air Turbulence

Above, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Modern technologies available to today's
aviation has made severe turbulence episodes even rarer. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The worst "white-knuckle" flight I ever endured was a short flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in April 1976.

I was heading to Las Vegas for a friend's wedding. My parents were already there, but due to a Saturday morning photography class I was taking, I decided to fly there after class. The flight was only an hour long and it was aboard a Boeing 737.

As we flew over the San Gabriel Mountains that skirted the Mojave Desert, we hit some severe turbulence. It was so bad, I remember a lady across the aisle taking out her rosary beads to pray. The weather was clear, but as the desert along the mountains was heating up, it caused the turbulence. The flight reminded me of the old Flash Gordon serials with the bouncing rocket ships of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Condé Nast Traveler had posted an article in February on the ten things you should know about turbulence. If you have a fear of flying, perhaps this article will help you endure air turbulence better.

Before getting into the ten points, they wrote:

Sure, it's terrifying stuff—but don't cancel your next flight just yet. We spoke to a number of pilots and aviation experts to get the facts about turbulence-related injuries and what's really happening when your plane is tossing violently (spoiler alert: it doesn't mean the plane's about to crash).

With new technologies available to modern aviation, violent air turbulence episodes are becoming rarer.

To read the article, go here.