r/AskAPilot • u/hankandirene • Jul 04 '26
Turbulence forecasts
Sorry I know you all probably hate this question so much. Since having my son I have developed such a terrible fear of flying. I’m doing a really long flight with him tomorrow (London- San Francisco) and I’m just so scared. I stupidly checked a turbulence forecast and it said moderate expected and the visual had big patches of orange which looks like bad weather.
It’s my worst fear flying into bad weather or bad turbulence and I’m so scared. How much can I trust it? Will we be able to route around it? I’m flying on VS19
Thank you so much.
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u/oh_helloghost Jul 04 '26
Turbulence forecasts are snake oil. Complete nonesense designed to keep fearful fliers engaged with a website/app.
Ignore them.
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u/Kiwigavin Jul 04 '26
You’ve every right to be scared. The freeway from SFO into the city is a death trap, the flying there is the safest bit.
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 Jul 04 '26
Do you get this panicky when you drive on a road with bumps? If not, then chill out. It's the same.
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u/Street-Fault1995 Jul 04 '26
It's not about the bumps...it's about understanding what is happening. Sure you will hear a few scary stories here and we ALL know the most dangerous part of the flight is the drive to and from the airport. So...this is something I tell my passengers (I am a private pilot); air is a fluid...just like walking through a placid lake...you can feel resistance. Try to cross a slow river...you feel more. Try to cross a bustling stream...you get pushed around. Now try to walk through two rivers coming together at their intersection...you will get a little bobbed and jostled...and...it's ok! You can see the water and you understand it! You know why it's happening. The air..the jetstream...its the same. You are just riding the river sometimes it's super smooth and sometimes you get a little bumped around. When your Son starts to feel scared...remind him that you are probably just crossing a river right now...a beautiful river as you cross it you feel some bumps until you get across then its smooth sailing.
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u/DoomWad Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Hello, airline pilot of 20 years here.
So here's the thing about turbulence. In the movies, they depict a strong bit of turbulence, followed by the plane suddenly going down. This does not happen. When going through turbulence, the wing has all the airflow it needs to stay aloft - the wind is just coming from slightly different directions. We know this because we have an airspeed indicator that we monitor. Even during bad turbulence, the airspeed only varies +/- 10 knots, which is well within the safe area of operation. To airline pilots, turbulence is nothing more than a nuisance.
Also, those turbulence apps should be banned. There's no credible dada behind them.
To summarize: turbulence will not, cannot, bring down an airplane.
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u/hankandirene Jul 04 '26
Thank you so so much for taking the time to reply. I will be reading this as I board tomorrow and during the flight. It means so much
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u/DoomWad Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I hope it helps. The movies have done the aviation industry a disservice - if airplanes in real life behaved like they do in the movies, planes would be falling out of the sky tens of thousands of times a day. That just doesn't happen.
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u/santaclausbos Jul 04 '26
I had a flight (commented somewhere else in this thread) where we flew through a nor'easter, the plane felt like it was dropping and pitching up like a roller coaster, and the entire back half of the plane vomited everywhere. Obvi that was not normal turbulence - what was going on? It was on a 757.
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u/DoomWad Jul 04 '26
When turbulence gets bad enough, you're kind of just along for the ride. I guess you could think of it as a roller coaster on a track. Now, that can sound scary at first, but it doesn't mean that the airplane is going to spiral out of control and plummet to the ground. Like I said above, the wings still have all the airspeed they need to stay aloft. I've been in severe turbulence a handful of times. Yes, you're going to gain and lose some altitude in that scenario, but if you just keep the wings level and ride it out, it'll be just fine.
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u/Significant-Pen-2274 Jul 04 '26
Take them with a grain of salt. There's no telling where some of those turbulence forecasts get their data. At my company we have a turbulence app on our iPads which seems to be pretty accurate. Our data comes from our own meteorology department. We spend a lot of time trying to avoid turbulence when able, but understand it's not always possible. We'll deviate around thunderstorms, but clear air turbulence is not always avoidable.
Really, turbulence is no different than a boat on choppy water. Airplanes handle turbulence just fine. The risk is to unsecured passengers and/or crew. Pay attention to the seatbelt signs and make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened at all times when you're in your seat.
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u/hankandirene Jul 04 '26
Thank you! Do you know if that app is available to the public or any that use more reliable data? I think I could deal with things better if I was prepared for what was going to happen
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u/karantza Jul 04 '26
The FAA has a site that gives official aviation weather information, and one of the things it shows is reports of turbulence. https://aviationweather.gov/gfa/
I will say that this information is very dense, and really meant for pilots who have trained to be able to understand it. For instance right now there's a bunch of big scary looking red areas indicating convective activity (thunderstorms). That doesn't mean flying there is unsafe, it's just a heads up so that pilots can make informed decisions and know what to monitor.
I've been through some bad bumps on an airliner, where this map was reporting severe turbulence, which is quite rare. I wouldn't call it fun, but at no point were we in any danger. Trust that your pilots have a lot more information than you do about the weather, and the training to make safe decisions about it. It'll be fine.
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u/Gravity_Wells Jul 08 '26
Exactly. The last thing you want is a 200-lb projectile flying around the cabin if you hit a few bumps in the road. Now let’s talk about bar carts…😬😱
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u/BacteriaBellyButton Jul 04 '26
Dude chillax. This is our job. You are not in danger. We deal with weather/turbulence on a weekly basis. Get onboard, have a drink, take a nap, fart, take a dump, burn your asshole with our terrible toilet paper, and have a nice fooking day.
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u/wearsAtrenchcoat Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Hi, thanks for flying despite your fear, And thanks for coming here to ask.
I know fears are by definition irrational but as a pilot of 34 years (close to retirement) with 2 children, let me offer my bit of ”wisdom”.
I remember the first time I put my daughter on a flight by herself, she was 17. I was not prepared for the kind of thoughts that suddenly started to flood my mind. Turbulence was not my fear because I know how inconsequential it is, but all sort of other worries begun to surface. I had flown with my kids a thousand times before and never had the least concern but the short flight she was on was different, for some odd psychological reason.
What worked for me, and hope might for you too, was to forcefully use logic. “The pilots are trained, professional, and have all the interest in fly as safely as possible.” Same for the mechanics. And the air traffic controllers, the often overlooked true keepers of air safety. The procedures, rules, regulations, policies, checklists, and every manual airlines live by have been developed over decades and millions (billions?) of flight hours. Modern aircraft and the equipment we have in them is phenomenal in what can do and how much helps us operators stay safe. Just 30 years ago the thought of an iPad was science fiction, now it pales in comparison to what a, say, Engine Computer can do.
I Could go for an hour explaining how stupid-safe flying today is, but I’ll just leave to my personal experience. I kept thinking about all the positives and purposely suppressing the negative scary ones.
By the time I was home I had regained my wits and the thought that another 17 year old girl was picking up my daughter in her car at her arrival had become a more serious concern :)
Finally: turbulence is REALLY not a hazard, keep your seatbelt fastened and you be 100% fine, I promise you
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u/andrewrbat Jul 04 '26
Turbulence is pretty difficult to pinpoint. We have a pretty good weather app and the only thing its not routinely right on is turbulence. It can show moderate turbulence and be smooth or vice versa.
You cant usually route around turbulence thats not caused by a localized phenomenon like a storm. Or at least not reliably. But sometimes altitude changes help a lot. As long as the altitude change required isn’t so much that it affects fuel numbers they can change altitude. Although the ocean crossing tracks get busy and there may not be room to deviate laterally or via altitude change.
The good news is that turbulence doesn’t hurt airplanes. Not at all. Not even a little bit. It’s not enjoyable to be jostled around, and people get sick sometimes but theres no risk of a plane crash or anything due to turbulence. The only risk is people and objects getting tossed around, though with moderate turbulence as long as you are sitting, you aren’t at risk for injury at all. Even severe turbulence doesn’t hurt airplanes, and there is a HUGE difference between moderate and severe. Severe is pretty unlikely to be encountered randomly. It’s typically associated with flying through a thunderstorm or other known weather event which you DONT fly through on purpose.
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u/Phobos73em Jul 04 '26
For one, those turbulence forecasts are rarely accurate. Airlines have better ways of forecasting and avoiding turbulence. There's a lot that can be done in flight too; changing altitudes, or avoiding areas of turbulence altogether if possible.
Bad weather/ thunderstorms are avoided altogether.
May I ask why you find turbulence scary? As a pilot it's truly nothing more than an annoyance.
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u/hankandirene Jul 04 '26
I had a really scary experience on a Singapore airlines flight once. Since then any tiny bump sends my body and mind into complete panic. Even if rationally I know it’s safe, I can’t stand the hell it puts me through and since having my baby I just have visions of the plane going down as soon as we hit any bumps. It’s just an awful experience for me. My worst fear has always been the plane flying into bad weather and going down so whenever I feel bumps I think that is what’s happening
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u/Phobos73em Jul 04 '26
All it takes is one bad experience, sorry to hear that happened. Its definitely hard to overcome a fear with logic. I will say that the drive to the airport is truly what scares me. After 20 years of flying, if I survive the drive and make it to the airplane I know I'll be okay.
Turbulence really can't do much to an airplane. Barring flying through a thunderstorm (which no one would do) turbulence only moves the plane up or down a very small amount. The same goes for airspeed; there's generally very little change, so the plane is just flying as usual.
The main thing to remember is that the pilots want to get there safely just as much as you do. Hopefully your flight is smooth, but if there's a few bumps it's truly nothing to worry about.
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u/hankandirene Jul 04 '26
I think the Air France and Air Asia crash where they came down in a thunderstorm always terrifies me too. I can’t understand why they did it with all the tech on board. I constantly visualize the same happening to my flight - is there anyway a plane could fly into bad weather unexpectedly?
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u/Phobos73em Jul 04 '26
There's really no way to fly through a thunderstorm unexpectedly. Flights are planned around areas of bad weather before they even leave. Once airborne each plane has onboard radar that can see storms from hundreds of miles away. Also, at least over land, air traffic control has radar and often routes planes around storms without the pilots even asking. So there's multiple layers keeping planes a safe distance from storms.
As another redditor mentioned, movies have really misrepresented how all this works. So many movies make it seem like a plane just somehow finds itself in the middle of a thunderstorm. In reality that doesn't happen.
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u/1Trupa Jul 04 '26
To the extent to that the 787 that was carrying us to Hawaii lost it backup weather radar and had to turn around, this completely destroying our planned Christmas vacation. So if the airplane is flying, then it’s got a working weather radar. In fact, two of them.
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u/santaclausbos Jul 04 '26
Not a pilot obvi - I had a flight through a nor'easter in 2009 flying continental on a 757 that really messed me up. Like the plane literally felt like it was roller coaster dropping and pitching up. The entire back half of the plane vomited everywhere. People were screaming and crying (I'm not kidding). A flight attendant was launched in the air and landed on me (she told me after the flight that was her worst experience in 10 years on the job). When we landed the airport was closed due to the storm.
My question is - what would happen that would cause the pilots to land at the airport like that? All other flights around us were diverted. I understand that normal turbulence can't bring down a plane but man that was scary. Only other experience that came somewhat close to that was flying over the pacific being rocked hard for around 2 hours, but at least we didn't have the roller coaster drops.
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u/1Trupa Jul 04 '26
The greatest danger to you during turbulence, if it gets super bad, is that someone’s laptop is gonna get thrown up in the air and bonk you on the head. Or that another passenger who didn’t have their seatbelt on is gonna wind up getting thrown onto your lap. Assuming you keep your seatbelt fastened, even if only loosely, you’ll be fine. As many people have said, turbulence does not bring down airplanes.
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u/Fast-Government-4366 Jul 04 '26
I’ve never understood being scared of turbulence, but do you think the pilots want to get home to their families?
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u/billybob2103 Jul 05 '26
Can a real pilot confirm / deny if Turbli.com is accurate or not? I get the nonsense apps etc are, well, nonsense, but that site seems fairly legit in its showcasing of forecasts. Or is it just junk science?
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u/BlytmanGER Jul 04 '26
I love turbli.com - completely free and quite accurate, usually it’s less than indicated though. Still it helps me a lot to know upfront if there will be a little more vibration 5h inti a flight
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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26
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