Oh get away lol!

Seriously, I’ve done an in flight experiment (on more than one occasions) and turbulence is FAR less noticeable when one is prone! Honestly.

Mind you, that’s on ‘big plane equals less bumps” on a small aircraft I still feel it like every other poor delicate tummy passenger!
And of course, once one nearby person has been affected then it takes me a nanosecond.....bleurgh!

It might be an urban legend, but some carriers reportedly give prospective cabin crew a very rough ride (either deliberately on an actual flight or in a simulator) as part of their training courses. If someone reacts badly, that recruit presumably would either drop out or flunk out.

BTW, I've always been told that turbulence is better toward the front of the aircraft, so this could explain why business class seems better this way.

The nausea is caused by the way our brains work. We get most of our orientation from our vision, it is an incredibly powerful influence on how our brains perceive the world. We gain balance info from our inner ear. The inner ear is very good at detecting change provided the rate of change exceeds a certain threshold. Small, gentle accelerations below that threshold are not perceived and the subsequent correction to normal can be felt as a jolt in the opposite direction. Our vision then tells our brain this is not right and nausea ensues.

On aircraft, our vision tells us very little as all the reference points are fixed, it is the reference points, ie the internal structure of the fuselage that are moving as the aircraft moves, with no external visual clues to the movement then once again, nausea. It is why we tell people with sea sickness to go on deck and stare at the horizon, we give them a fixed visual reference point upon which the brain can then concentrate to marry the visual info with the inner ear data on movement. In a car or aircraft reading, ie generally having one’s head tilted down really adds another dimension to the confusion the brain has to rectify. I get motion sickness in a car f I’m in the back seat reading yet can fly aerobatics without the tiniest bit of nausea.

The inner ear has three semi circular canals all in different planes. Within those canals is a fluid, the density of which matches exactly the density of a small bone, the otolith which sits on some fine hairs. As we move our head, the otolith tends to stay in place due to inertia and thus bends the hairs which then sends a signal to our brain informing it of the motion. The fluid in the ear is very sensitive to alcohol, which changes the density and can cause the otolith to float and signals movement when none is present. This causes the spinning feeling when one is tipsy and lays down.

So so all these things add up to how we feel nausea on an aircraft. We have no sensible visual reference, we fool the semi circular canals with sub threshold accelerations, we place the semi circular canals in the “wrong” oreientaion by tilting the aircraft and we get rapid reversals in motion in turbulence.

Some are are more prone to nausea that others but the biggest two things to do to help are not to drink alcohol and not to put one’s head down at all - don’t read etc or work at a laptop or iPad.

These are called Mototoks

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