This is sort of a long story, but the whole of it should be told because it was funny after everything was over.

My wife and I are on our return flight from our honeymoon last year in Japan. NRT > ATL. Same route over, all was fine (and I was terrified beforehand because I hate heights).

I'd been on two commercials and several private planes while this was her first commercial and she had been in one private plane several times (her dad flew).

The flight was NW metal with Delta staff (right before the merger was finalized) and we'd had the good fortune of talking to the pilot at breakfast as he was staying in our hotel.

We board the plane, middle row this time on a 744 (and I've been sad the whole time because the flight code I planned on a 772 had been changed completely due to the merger), my wife and I are dead center with a Japanese woman in her mid 40's by my wife, and a rather quiet and unfriendly American girl by me.

We take off, 30 minutes in the air, and the Japanese woman is telling my wife about how she flies all the time because her husband lives in Tokyo and she lives in Texas, she loves Dwight Yokham and Kevin Bacon, etc.

Suddenly the plane drops sharply in the middle of meal service, the seatbelt light comes on, and the FA's are told to return the carts and buckle up.

This goes on for the next hour, drop a few hundred feet, get slung side to side, food and beverages all over the place. At one point early into it the woman beside my wife looks over and tells her not to worry, she's seen worse. About 10 minutes after that she asks my wife if she's scared, to which my wife replies "yes", the woman then says she is too. My wife looked like she could cry.

I've no doubt that we were fine the whole time, but that was my first turbulence experience on a commercial, and that was my wife's first experience with either. Needless to say she was not excited when I suggested we fly to Orlando this year instead of drive.

We still laugh about it though. Human reaction to things like that are pretty funny after the fact. I'm sure I myself looked pretty silly sitting with my eyes closed trying to decide if I could come to terms with the possibility of crashing or not. :p

Era Aviation DHC-6 Twin Otter from Homer, AK to Anchorage one winter night in 1998. Can hardly describe the pitching, yawing, and rolling. I was near the rear of the A/C, and no door to block my view right out the front windscreen. I was doing OK until the woman right behind me moaned "ohhh... puker! " and grabbed for her bag, a moment too late. Chain reaction set in and by the time we landed I think 3/4 of the passengers had heaved. First and only time I ever got airsick. After landing I ran into the FO standing outside, chain smoking, muttering about how long until he had enough twin engine time to get out of Alaska !

Three come to mind...

Years ago (maybe 1980 or so) the ex and I were flying on a charter from BWI to San Martin and my guess is that the pilot had to get that plane somewhere for a regularly scheduled flight. We seemed to fly in the middle of a storm for most of the flight and dropped several times quite a bit. The worst part was that the couple sitting in the row across from us were sitting there working on their wills and discussing them for a good hour and a half. Just what you wanted to hear on that flight.

During 1992 and 1993 I flew regularly from Flint to TPA and got to know the staff pretty well. During one of the big winter storms, when I was checking in, they told me no matter what I was offered, don't give up my seat cause there was a storm coming which was going to be pretty bad. The flight from Flint to PIT had quite a few bumps to the point that I watched my Screwdriver come out of the glass and back into the glass several times. Several people lost their lunch during those drops. My PIT to TPA flight was the last one to leave Pittsburgh for about 3 days but wasn't anywhere near bumpy as the first leg.

I flew pretty regularly from JAX to TPA while doing work in Jax. Tampa has some hellacious thunderstorms in the summer. One trip in particular (I think it was on a Dash-8) was so bumpy that all that I could do was close my eyes, grab the tray table and pretend that I was on a ride at an amusement park. (Possibly a drink or two ahead of the flight helped too)... As I was getting off, the FA looked pretty green but said that she was amazed at how calm I looked cause it was probably the worst storm that she had ever flown through.

Turbulence for 6 hours!
 

My wife and I were on a flight on Alitalia's Airone Airbus 330-200 from EWR to FCO. I am a frequent flyer (~300K flown miles / yr) but my wife isn't. Anyway - we were struck with several long drawn episodes of turbulence which totaled around 6 hours of the approx. 8-hour flight.

I was concerned and seeing me concerned made it worse for my wife.

Could this 6-hour deal be entirely due to weather? I mean we were probably traveling through several zones right? In all my flying I have never experienced this.

Any feedback / comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Mine was in 2001 on a United Flight from Chicago O'Hare-Sacramento. It was a horrible trip for turbalance.

Today. I was on a UX E170 from MSY-ORD. Weather in MSY was pretty bad, with heavy rain the entire time I was there. ATC routed us through a pretty bad storm, that made a few people screech, and the guy next to me in F, grab my arm.. When we hit the turbulence initially, it was pretty light. However, it got more and more intense each minute. The last big bump was enough to make us drop a considerable (at least to me, I don't know how far it actually was) amount, and shake the entire aircraft. Definitely don't want to repeat that experience again!

Take a look at the radar:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/T...934Z/KMSY/KORD

worst was i was on a MCI-IAH-CLL flight and the second leg from IAH to CLL was really bumpy

DFW-ZRH was bumpy too but we flew through bad weather

Mine was late 1990s or early 2000, on a commercial flight coming in to DEN (I think it was probably a D8, though my memory is of a prop plane that seems longer than the D8s I have been on recently)

Coming in to DEN, we're warned about 15 minutes out that there is some turbulence, but that they've been told it will be safe to land. The approach was absolutely horrific. I can handle the up and down turbulence, since I know that it probably won't do anything. But the yaw on the plane was unlike anything I've ever experienced. Probably was only a degree or two, put it felt like the nose was swinging left and right by 15 degrees. As we neared the runway, you could actually see the ground swinging left-right (only a bit, but that's more than I want to see!). They had to abort the landing, circled around and took an approach that had us turning almost up until we were over the airport fence before straightening out and dropping hard on the runway.

Not at all pleasant. Yaw is a nasty thing.

Puddle jumper flight from Pullman, WA to Spokane.
 

Long ago in the 80s. When we landed over a dozen people, including the FA and copilot, barfed on the tarmac (me too). Surprisingly we all made it off the plane before emptying our stomachs, and it felt worse once we deboarded that in flight, which was just scary. The pilot said it was the worst turbulence he ever experienced.

It was early july last year. I was flying Prague - Bucharest, on Czech Airlines. Flew 2 hours through a large atmospheric front that stretched all across Eastern Europe. Was seated right next to the wing.

The whole trip, from take-off to landing, was a continuous montagne rousse. Up, down, left, right. Didn't know you can fly sideways with a plane...I just could not lean backwards on the seat because I though I was going to vomit at any moment. I really hated the right armrest because it was not rigid and i felt I could not hold on to it. I wanted to hug the chair in front. I was standing on my toes for 2 hours trying to calm myself down. The funny part was that for 2 hours of horror, i had a guy next to me that SLEPT all the way. I was simply perplexed someone could do that ( maybe he took some pills or something...). The FAs tried to server dinner and they basically chucked food as they passed. When she got the cart next to me, the plane dropped, the woman froze, I missed my sandwich as I instinctively clinched the chair. They gave up right after. No drinks.

The planes trajectory was like very chaotic and our altitude kept varying by 2000-3000 kms. When i got at the destination, all our luggage was wet as the czech ground handlers left the luggage carts in the rain in Prague.

Had some tough landings (Bruxelles, Odessa, Genoa) because of low altitude wind shear issues. Noticed a pattern with the airports that are close to the sea. It's a bit scary when you can see treetops and suddenly the plane drops out of the sky.