My story was out of Queenstown NZ.

Queenstown is on the South Island on a nice lake surrounded by pretty big mountains. The day before this flight, we had taken a charter in a Cessna 185 up over the glaciers for a quick two hour flight. That was a little bumpy, but no worse than commercial flights. The pilot was cute, so I figured I would die in good hands, at least.

The day of the flight, there was a decent breeze at the airport, but we did not notice anything until we got up to 3-4,000 feet when the bumps were HUGE! I normally don't have tummy troubles, but this one almost got me. We were in the back of the plane, so maybe others did not have it so bad, but this was well above the "moderate chop" levels.

The most painful part of the trip was that the other passengers (mostly tourists from Asia) were treating this as an amusement ride! They were laughing it up after every bounce. I was not amused.

We were the last flight out that morning before they closed the place. The 737 we took on the next hop (Christchurch-Wellington) was a welcome sight.



[This message has been edited by chipper (edited 06-24-2000).]