Originally Posted by
StarAlliance2005
I was wondering if turbulence can make the aircraft flip or just fall down..i must admit i get nervous when turbulence gets extreme and always wondering if the plane can actually flip or just fall down..a pilot who sat with me on a flight told me that's impossible and there has never been a crash due to turbulence..hmm any toughts?
A recent re-run of air-crash investigations ( or was is seconds-from-disaster?) on NatGeo was about TWO B737 crashes in the US ( Colorado springs in 1991 and another five years later ) that nearly led to grounding of 737's worldwide! The first was due to severe CAT and the other due to a turbulent wake of another jet! A THIRD plane could have crashed, but survived to tell the tale. It finally offered the clue to NTSB about those yet-unsolved crashes. Turned out it was a hydraulic servo valve that actually reversed the rudder! (Can you even imagine driving and you turn the wheel right and the car goes left?)
The crashes were turbulence triggered. The pilots used the rudder to correct, the valve turned fiendish and 150 humans met their maker.