Replies

My younger brother was in a little pound jumper, he said, smaller planes are real bumpy in flight, but, I have never been in anything smaller than a 737.
At least larger planes are engineered to handle turbulence, my boss use to tell me, that the wings on a large jet liner has to flex, it can't be ridged, if the wings were ridged, they would snap apart.
I loved it when I flew in 747s, the grace of the plane, and the steady drone of the engines had a effect on you that helps you fall asleep, but, the seats were so uncomfortable, I could not sleep.
I loved it to see the wings flex from the weight when you were in flight on the 747.
I got a book about the 747 (Boeing 747 - Design and development since 1969 ( in truth, since 1966 ) by Guy Norris and Mark Wagner )... there is a picture were they did a stress test on the wing of the 747, and they bent the wings 29 feet before it occurred failure - 116.7 % design load, and 174 % of the max load expected in normal operations.
The 747 if one tuff bird or lady,,, there is a incredible survival story of one of the 747 SPs in Feb, 1985 coming into towards San Fransisco International Airport.
The 747SP number 4 engine failed, and the pilots got permission to to descend and try to restart the engine, but, the plane went into a spiral dive and out of control and went from 41,000 feet to 11,000 out of control, and for a few seconds, the plane was doing speeds over mach.
The NTSB has a report about this incident.
The plane lost some of it's control surfaces, but, still managed to land safely at San Fransisco Airport.

In the little 'puddle jumpers' the wings aren't that long to begin with, as fuel tanks etc do not need to be huge as in larger passenger planes. I would be amazed to see any wing flex 29 feet! (Just watching Dick Ruttan's Voyager flex on the runway was amazing)

I've slept in my share of large planes at altitude (noisy beasts), but nothing makes you feel like you're 'flying' than simply cruising around at 130 knots atl 1000 feet. Its just as much fun to watch trainers (T-3 and T6), C-130's, and A-10 Warthogs at the AF base cruising around. Every one in a while we'd see a C5, and it was always a thrill to hear a plane taking off with JATO cannisters (they're loud!)

The ones that would always get us were the Blackhawk's coming over at 80-100' in the darkness, as the para-rescue trained. I didn't know him, but Jason Cunningham was one of the 1st casualties in Afghanistan (4 Mar 2002) attempting a rescue and had probably flew over us a thousand times. Ever since then a chill runs down my spine when I hear one in the darkness.