Sometimes I wonder if atc would love to ban the constant reporting of light turbulence, and less. (including both levels of ‘chop’). The search for that perfectly smooth altitude is an impossible task which consumes huge amounts of airtime and controller effort. I get the result on passenger comfort & effect on brand but I think passengers should stay in their seats strapped down tight - and leave the drink carts locked up. It’s flying. There’s going to be some roughness. (quit being weenies for G’s sake).lol
I don’t even carry passengers and I’m all for finding a smooth altitude. Flying in constant chop is fatiguing. Plus it makes drinking coffee and doing my crossword harder.
Just the opposite actually, they encourage it! The only way they’ll know what altitudes have a good ride is from PIREPs. Why do you think they’d want to ban helpful information?
It also helps the computer modelling, I'd assume. I gave two PIREPs today and I think if it's quiet on the radio, it's a decent thing to do for your fellow aviators.
I think they should completely do away with the term. It's turbulence! Who cares if it has a repetition to it. And the search for a smooth ride? Come on, toughen up a little. Lol.
I have had the good fortune to make a number of trips in a Citation jet in the right seat. A couple of times, as we were listening to different airliners asking about flight conditions, looking for a better ride than what they were having in the flight levels in the 30s, the guy in the left seat would punch the mic button and say, "smooth at flight level 4-2-O." Wise guy, he knew they couldn't get that high.
Hours on end of even light turbulence gets old. Usually you can manage to find smooth air. That’s why you hear people checking in with “smooth” or “continuous light”. Of course, some days there just isn’t a decent ride to be had at a useful altitude.
Well, the "snowflakey" passengers are the paying customers, and if you can give them a more pleasant experience on your airline, why not? Sell more cocktails, sandwiches, etc. And maybe avoid some bad publicity from folks describing the horrible ride they had on that particular airline. By the way, I had a young guy come to me for a flight lesson two years ago because he is terrified of flying. He had won a trip to Mexico but was afraid to go. The intro flight went well, and he did return for a second lesson, but that was all. Yesterday, he texted me and asked if I would be willing to accompany him, at his expense, on a commercial flight to Minneapolis (about 20 minutes) to help him overcome his fear. I said yes.
I’m assuming you don’t fly for a living. The most important passenger is me and I’m far from snowflakey. Old and grouchy maybe. Kidding aside, constant turbulence is also fatiguing. Try it for hours on end doing an ocean crossing and you’ll change your mind.
Had a flight from JFK to DFW last weekend that spent most of the time at FL240 since apparently the ride any higher was trash Which would also explain why we had to divert for fuel when DFW closed
Flying at FL240 would not explain why you had to divert for fuel when DFW closed. I've done a few flights below FL260, when normally we would have been above FL360, but we landed with the same amount of fuel as if we had flown at the normal altitude. That's because the amount of fuel we could carry was based on our maximum landing weight. So since we planned on burning more fuel by flying lower we could take more fuel. In the airlines you plan on your enroute fuel then add your arrival fuel (FAR reserve, alternate, and contingency). In your case if you had flown at the normal JFK to DFW altitude you would have still diverted for fuel because you would have arrived with the same amount of fuel.
I was being slightly facetious The line of storms went as far south as San Antonio. As it was relayed to us poor schlubs in back, the options were to hold for an hour and see if DFW opened back up, go south around the end and possibly still have to stop for fuel, or just stop in Houston and wait.
Probably not as many as a bus-flyer. Standby...18 flights in the last 30 days. Hey that wasn't an attempt to minimize my argument, was it? Wait a minute there, that's exactly me!
The airliner could have replied with something like, "Thanks, and how's the paycheck up there?" And, yeah. No FL420. RVSM airspace ends at FL410 so it's 2,000' spacing above that. Turbulence and chop are distinctly different. Today we have access to quite a few tools to help us avoid turbulence through our iPad EFBs connected through the airplane's wifi internet system. Three turbulence forecasting products and three turbulence reporting products. It isn't unusual for them all the disagree with each other. In addition to the sigmets and airmets, we have two WSI forecast products, FPG (flight plan guidance) and RPM Turbulence. FPG is produced by a meteorologist and RPM is a compute model. They often have significant areas of disagreement as to where the turbulence will be. We have three products for displaying actual turbulence reports. PIREPs, TAPS, and Skypath app. TAPS is an automated turbulence/wind/temperature system that is installed on many airliners that reports the data in the background without crewmember intervention. Skypath is an iPad app which uses the iPad's acceleration sensors to record and report turbulence. Even with all that data, it often takes ATC reports from nearby aircraft to find the best altitudes.
Learned something today: Chop causes bumps or jolts without an appreciable impact on altitude or attitude (pitch, roll, or raw), whereas turbulence causes bumps or jolts that do cause changes in altitude or attitude. Chop can only be reported as light or moderate, while turbulence can be light, moderate, severe, or extreme.
Forgetting the comfort of passengers and crew, I have been on an airliner, and watched the wing tip bounce more than 3 feet up and down as we passed through a thunderstorm. Belts tight, Flight attendants also strapped in. The fatigue wear in that hour was probably equal to a week or more of normal flight. That deterioration is not readily detected, so the airframe could be thought to be fine by flight hours, but lose a wing in the next short violent session. Baby the plane and passengers, I may be on its next flight. In light planes, I am 6 feet tall, and even with a tight seat belt, pre shoulder straps, I have bounced my head off the ceiling of three different planes, 2 manufacturers. One of the reasons that my wife flies with me most of the time is my success at finding the altitude with the smoothest air I have accepted as much as 20K of additional head wind to cross the Appalachian Mountains at a smoother, higher altitude.. She has flown 80% of my cross country time with me. Do you tough guys achieve such a success?
This is true. No one cares that I can fly several hundred thousand pounds of machine to within INCHES or fractions of a knot tolerances…. Not a lick. But they are WOWED that I can find a smooth ride… and NOT impressed when I can’t…. Just the facts.
The wings are designed to do that. The composite wings in the B787 do it much more than the metal wings in conventional designs. During certification testing, the 787 wingtip was flexed up 26 feet before failing.
My kids (3 & 5) love turbulence. I perplexed a center controller the other day when he offered FL350 because it was universally reported as smooth while I was in continuous chop at 370 and I turned it down because “we like the chop”. It didn’t hurt that I had a couple extra knots of tailwind too…
Heck I have been asked a number of times. More recently on climb out, asked as we passed through 6000, I reported it smoothed out, and immediately, he passed it to another aircraft.
