Article: How to Know If You’ll Have a Bumpy Flight

[AFF Editor]

How to Know If You’ll Have a Bumpy Flight is an article written by AFF editorial staff:

How to Know If You'll Have a Bumpy Flight

Turbli.com provides a turbulence forecast for any upcoming commercial flight based on real-time weather information.

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic below.

 

[jb747]

There was a turbulence prediction on the flight plans. I found it to be a waste of e-ink.

 

[SYD]

Flying UA from Oz was invariably turbulent with extended seatbelt on time. I’ve always assumed the pilots sought out jet steam assistance whenever possible?

Apart from spilling your bevy, you’d land early but then have to wait for immigration to open up shop…

 

[Enjoying it]

If you really want to geek out, school yourself up on the flight path and have a look at the SIGWX charts from BOM.

http://www.bom.gov.au/aviation/charts/sigwx/#

 

[Enjoying it]

 

[jb747]

Flying UA from Oz was invariably turbulent with extended seatbelt on time.

That’s more a bad habit of leaving the seat belts sign on for very extended times when there’s the absolute slightest of bumps. You then end up with cabin crew, and passengers, ignoring it, but I guess when there’s an issue you can tell the lawyers that the signs were on.

I’ve always assumed the pilots sought out jet steam assistance whenever possible?

No, not really. The flight planners may adjust a plan to make use of the wind, but they’re interested in the overall effect, and not a relatively short ride. As pilots we’ll manoeuvre around weather as picked up by the radar, but then we go back to the planned track. There are many aircraft, often on parallel routes, so lateral track changes are normally quite limited.

Apart from spilling your bevy, you’d land early but then have to wait for immigration to open up shop…

Actually quite silly really. You know when it all opens, so you should be able to plan to hit the fixes so that you land pretty well exactly on opening time. If you do that early, you can save substantial fuel.