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What Constitutes "stong/ Severe Turbulence"?  
User currently offlineZrs70 From United States of America, joined Dec 2000, 2698 posts, RR: 11
Posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 20 hours ago) and read 1053 times:

Different people have different perspectives on this. Often after a flight, my friend will say that the few bumps prior to landing was "heavy turbulence" while I saw it as quite light.

What are your thoughts? Do people around you tend to call light turbulence heavy (or visa-versa)?

IMHO, heavy turbulence means constant bouncing, FA's relegated to their seats, severe down/up drafts, etc.

Light turbelunce means my drink is swishing a bit in its cup (with perhaps even a little spill).


12 year airliners.net vet! 2000-2012
6 replies: All unread, jump to last
 
User currently offlineIainhol From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR:
Reply 1, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 1043 times:

I think the bigger factor is who sudden it is. If it catches you by surprise that is when it is bad, and causes injury!
Iain

User currently offlineGoingboeing From United States of America, joined Dec 1999, 4875 posts, RR: 22
Reply 2, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 1035 times:

What constitutes "Strong/severe" turbulence? - Usually turbulence that results the overwhelming stench of vomit permeating the cabin can be considered "strong".

User currently offlineJETPILOT From United States of America, joined May 1999, 3128 posts, RR: 37
Reply 3, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 1037 times:

The FAA categorizes turbulence in the AIM as:

Light: Turbulence that momentarilly causes slight erratic changes in altitude and or attitude.

Moderate: grearter intrensity than light. Aircraft remaind in positive control at all times

Severe: Turbulennce that causes abrupt changes in altitude and or attitude. It usually causes large variations in indicated airspeed. Aircraft may be momentarilly out of control

Extreme: Turbulence in which the aircraft is violently tossed about and is practically impossible to control. It may cause structural damage.

Most people will never experience severe let alone extreme turbulence.

As a pilot I have only encountered moderate turbulence on 2 or 3 occasions. Never severe or extreme.

JET

User currently offlineOPNLguy From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR:
Reply 4, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 19 hours ago) and read 1029 times:

http://www.faa.gov/atpubs/AIM/Chap7/aim0701.html#7-1-21

People's subjective "gut" feelings aside, the criteria are in the AIM, Table 7-1-6.

Cheers...

User currently offlineGalaxy5 From United States of America, joined Mar 2000, 2034 posts, RR: 32
Reply 5, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 16 hours ago) and read 1000 times:

we caught severe mountain wake turbulence once doing a low lvl flt in el paso texas. the map nav was thrown around the cockpit like a rag doll and he hit the engineers seat almost breaking his ribs and he made me spill my coke ( the rat bastard ) but it was very exciting . MADAR printed out all kinds of vertical velocity reports, LOL it was a hoot. Big thumbs up


"damn, I didnt know prince could Ball like that" - Charlie Murphy
User currently offlineRonE From Israel, joined Jan 2001, 326 posts, RR: 0
Reply 6, posted (11 years 2 months 3 days 15 hours ago) and read 989 times:

If during meal-time all the food trays are upside-down and their contents covering all the passengers from head to toe, THEN you know you have encountered fairly strong turbulence  Wink/being sarcastic
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