[BenLurkin]

“stay buckled up for the duration of your flight”

http://www.johnspeedie.com/healy/Uh_Yeah.mp3

[cloudmountain]

I've gone over the Rockies by plane DOZENS of times.
It really is a ROCK and ROLL experience. The obvious answers are sleep or a good stiff martini.

I always go over them in the SPRING or SUMMER. No reason for me to try it any other time. I couldn't IMAGINE the experience during a good old fashioned winter storm. Yikes!

[DIRTYSECRET]

A good time to holler out “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.”

[PieterCasparzen]

The flight will have olive juice and vermouth so passengers can make their own martinis.

[wastedyears]

Must’ve been a... nasty experience for anybody in the lavatories.

[wastedyears]

Bumpy ride ping

[KJC1]

This reminds me of a news story about a flight between somewhere in CA and Hawaii maybe ten years ago. The turbulence caused flight attendants and some passengers to hit their heads on the ceiling of the plane causing serious neck/head/other injuries.

I fly a decent amount, and ever since that story I really pay attention to buckling up even more than before.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Bang Ding Ow.

[Rome2000]

Terrible incident but that's when you tighten the seat belt and realize the plane is in TURBULENCE.

Odds are the people who were injured were not taking proper precautions.

[Rembrandt]

Thank you for choosing United and we hope you’ll choose United again the next time you travel.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Fortunately there were no Moslems aboard.

[Moonman62]

I was on a plane that landed so hard that some of the oxygen masks came down along with a couple of ceiling panels, but nothing like that from turbulence.

I notice on Flightaware that commercial airliners avoid moderate to heavy precipitation when they can. For this particular flight there was no precipitation along the route.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL1676/history/20140217/1815Z/KDEN/KBIL

[Brandonmark]

[lacrew]

Global warming.

[cva66snipe]

Ticket Agent: You get an extra vegetable in First Class.
Drunk: Ok I'll take an Onion.
Ticket Agent: Were going to have some turbulence. Drunk: Nah that's OK I'll stick with the Onion.

from Hudson & Landry's Ajax Airlines

[steve86]

Sounds like they encountered a rotor cloud off the Rockies.

Hard to find a good photo, but sailplane pilots know them well.

Much more violent than they look, like a (slow) horizontal tornado:

[dglang]

Back in the 60’s I was on a flight from Indianapolis to Chicago which hit one of those Clear Air Turbulences (CATs) and dropped according to the pilot 2,000 ft.

I was literally up in the air reaching down trying to grab my seat and pull myself back in. Being young and in the Army I didn’t see the need to buckle up before that flight.

On another trip over 20 years ago on a trip from Chicago to Lincoln NB we were violently bounced up and down and shaken from side to side for the first hour and then they finally rolled the plane out to the runway.

They wouldn’t even let us up from our seats to exit the plane before takeoff the wind was so bad. We just had to sit and wait.

[skinkinthegrass]

!

[C210N]

Shouldn't have been any problem. The passengers that assumed crash positions would all be safe from harm.

[Mouton]

I was in a similar experience in a 737 flying from Dallas to Newport News in the 90s. Shortly after takeoff, in april, we encountered a sudden lurching up and down. Flight attendant was moving the cart up the aisle, it fell back into her and knocked her against the rear of the plane causing her to lose sensation below the neck. We did a medical emergency landing in Shreveport, barely long enough for that plane, she was removed, an attendant from another airline volunteered to handle the safety duties of the missing attendant and we blasted off barely out of that short runway airport. I never heard how she fared from the injury.