Worst ever turbulence
 

Just got off an IAH-YYC flight which experienced the most violent turbulence of my life. About an hour out of IAH the captain came on and said to buckle up since we'd be trying to squeeze through two lines of thunderstorms. Shortly afterwards we hit a violent drop which caused the drink cart to hit the ceiling along with just about everything else in the cabin including drinks, cell phones, and laptops. Numerous folks were screaming and afterwards the FA made a special trip through the cabin just to pick up the used air-sickness bags. She also made a comment that in her 25 years as an FA she'd never experienced anything that bad. Fortunately all pax seemed to have heeded the seatbelt sign or it could have been pretty ugly. The pilot came on after all was calm and explained that the gap in the storms had closed at the last minute and we'd gone straight into a severe storm.

Out of curiosity I looked up the flight on FlightAware along with PIREP which I believe pilot issued:

DHT UUA /OV LBL225040/TM 0040/FL380/TP B738/TB SEV/RM ZAB 340B380

Curious to know if anybody else here has experienced something similar? In my ~350K of lifetime flights I've never had anything even close to this.

How awful. Sorry to hear about your experience, and glad that no one was injured.

My father was flying ATL to DEN today and his flight had to divert to ABQ to avoid this line of storms. I had saw that little hole in-between the storm cells and was wondering why they didn't attempt to go through. It's pretty clear why now!

I'm glad everyone turned out okay on your flight.

Been happening a lot recently:

Turbulence forced a United Airlines flight bound for New York's LaGuardia Airport to land shortly after takeoff Tuesday night and sent five people to the hospital, a United spokeswoman confirmed.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/13/travel...ml?hpt=hp_bn10

It's a great time of the year to be flying.

You won't be the last to go through that experience.

I've been through some drops where everything has risen about 30cm, but nothing to the roof.

How long did it last?

Gosh! That sounds pretty bad, never experienced that bad turbulence, even been through what I would consider fairly bad weather conditions on smaller and bigger planes.
Out of curiosity, where can you see the PIREP reports? Sorry might be obvious question, but never really looked into them and sounds fascinating.

And ~350K flights! That is impressive, how have you managed to accumulate that? How many flights do you in normal week?

Weather was pretty bad today, and my flight was bumpy as well.
Our flight was about 50% longer than originally planned due to weather.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/U...353Z/KORD/KDEN

I hope the FAs were not serving drinks when this happened. I once experienced a drop while on approach into LAX during a winter storm, but it didn't seem as severe as what you had experienced.

Hope you are feeling well by now. Glad that everyone is safe and unharmed.

That probably means 350,000 flight miles.

Do the math on how many decades it might take to fly 350,000 flights if you spend every day on a plane, 365 days a year. :)

I am guessing you are on the right track or OP has reached very respectable age... :)

I've been on a flight where they couldn't land a 747... not really turbulence, just high winds.

My sister once hit a bump and landed in a seat on the other side of the aisle.

I was just flying US 223 for BOS-PHX this evening, and we went way south of the normal route -- over Midland-Odessa, TX when the normal route is around ABQ. Only minor turbulence on this route, but we did get in half an hour late due to the longer route.

The worst turbulence I have ever experienced was some years ago on a flight from New Orleans to Cincinnati. It started not long after take-off and continued unabated for most of the flight. Everyone was required to remain seated with seat-belts buckled for the entire duration of the turbulence, which ended really only about five minutes before landing, when we were well down in altitude. No food or drink service, since all the cabin crew were seated. No visits to the lavatories, and in truth one would almost certainly have fallen over on the way there and, had one eventually got there, hit one's head on the ceiling in the lavatory.

At first I was terrified, but then I recall thinking, quite suddenly: "what's the point?" and just settling down (as well as possible) and making the most of it (if that makes sense).

My other main memories of the flight are of the man sitting across the aisle from me, who periodically took large gulps out of a bottle of Scotch whisky that he had with him (this was before any restrictions on liquids on planes), and of a number of passengers using their vomit bags – it must be unusual in these days of jet travel for adults to be plane-sick, especially in large numbers.

All most unpleasant. Delta gave everyone food and drink vouchers for use on arrival at Cincinnati and also for use on a subsequent Delta flight.

I did notice that lots of the passengers repaired to the first bar they passed in the terminal after leaving the plane. :p

I've seen the drinks hit the ceiling -- what a mess! That's the only time I've been on a domestic flight where everyone applauded upon landing.