Should You Be Worried About Turbulence?

Last year, 194 million people flew on US airlines. And out of those, guess how many people were injured in turbulence? Couple thousand. Just 17. 17. It's pretty rare. But how many of those? 194 million were scared? I think a lot. I'm Erin Black and this is Leslie Josephs. We both cover aviation here at CNBC, and this week we are talking about turbulence. Which are you afraid

of? Turbulence? I don't like it. I'm not comfortable. Know I want it to end immediately, like mid-flight. You're going through turbulence. Are you worried for your life? I'm not worried for my life. I'm worried for my comfort. And I want it to end immediately. And I. I hate it, actually. Are you afraid of turbulence? I am not anymore. I used to be. I actually had, like,

a panic attack, like, ten years ago on a flight just because it wasn't actually turbulence. We were, like, landing in Texas, and it was just like we were dropping and turning, and I just, like, freaked out. But now I think I'm like one of those people. When the plane starts shaking that you look over and they're just like super calm. Yeah, I think everyone has like

their most. Of the time. Most of the time it depends on the turbulence. You have to. Look at like the business travelers, I feel like. And if other people are calm, I usually feel calm. The flight attendants sitting there. Just sitting there, just like, yeah, like scrolling on the phone. I feel good about that. If I see another nervous person and we lock eyes, it's like,

forget it. Like, it's just, yeah, not not a fan, but it is not. Dangerous community of of people, you know who are also scared. But I think learning more about it has made me less scared. You know like you were scared maybe years ago and kind of worried for safety. It's a really uncomfortable thing, especially when it's in the middle of your flight. You can't really

get out. It's not like you're on a bus that's like shaking back and forth. And if you're getting sick or you're feeling comfortable, you can like, get off at the next stop. So you're sort of trapped in there. Yeah. But I think once you learn about it and how well planes are designed to handle turbulence, it's such an integral part of flying that, you know, it

could make you calmer over the years or it made me calmer. Well, let's start with what is turbulence? So turbulence. I mean, you're flying in the air like 400, 500mph. Turbulence is essentially encountering all these kind of instabilities in the air. And they can be caused by everything from pressure changes. Thunderstorms, air around mountains. There's something called clear air turbulence, which is probably the most vexing

because it can happen very suddenly. It's very hard to predict. And turbulence in general is is really hard to predict. So, you know, you're flying in the air. It's in motion. The plane is in motion. And and that's why it kind of feels so uncomfortable or to some people, fun. It always feels like in the summer months, it's way more bumpy. The summer is really tricky

because there are lots of thunderstorms. And even if you're not, you know, pilots fly don't fly generally through a thunderstorm. Sometimes there's nowhere to avoid, you know, where you're flying. But they're not going to fly generally on top of it. They're not going to fly through it. They're going to fly around it. Even if you're miles outside of it, you could still get some of those

bumps when you're coming in to land. That's when I get calm because I'm like, it's going to end. Like we're going to we're almost there. Like, if it's bumpy on the way down, fine. If it's like if we're like leveled off and there's like 4 or 5 hours to go, really uncomfortable because like, you have no end in sight, at least there's a goal. It's like,

oh, we're 20 minutes from New York, okay? But, you know, you're you're going through weather often. You can't you can't avoid it. You can't like skirt a cloud cover that's covering New York City. I think it's one of those things that you can't really get around if you need to get from A to B and flying is the only way. Yeah, I think they should make

rules to that. Like if you're going through bad turbulence, anyone on the window has to open the shade. Oh yeah. I hate when you're like, like it's shaking and like. And you're like, yeah, you're like, this is normal, but still, like, can I just see outside? Can I just see what's happening? The reason why I sat at the window and like developed this habit of always

picking a window seat or usually picking a window seat is like I had to check how much the wing was shaking just. Just to see. Not that I'm going to like. Cause, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay. But sometimes. And you also want to see what the weather is. It's like, are there storms near us? And you could kind of see like those billowing

clouds, like you talked about summer travel, but like, I don't know, it gave me some kind of comfort. It's a weird thing, like you drive in a car and you could see in front of you and you're on a jet like that door is closed. And it's just I don't know, there's all kind of like psychological stresses and issues. I'm sure that the. Clear air is

is really interesting. Like when you open the window and you're just like it's like a perfect you can see, you know, hundreds of miles away and you're just like, what is happening? Yeah, I think that's the most. Upsetting or if you're really scared or just kind of a strange phenomenon because it's like we can't see it. It's not like a storm where you could see the

clouds. See that like. Reassures me, like, I don't like when you're in like, those really huge clouds and you open the window and you see nothing. Yeah. Like, that's what makes me, like, really nervous. Yeah or. Night. Because, like, you. Know, the pilots are up there and they can't see anything. Either. No, definitely not. I mean, I once used all of my American Airlines, Miles, going

from Lima to New York to go in business class and on LAN and now LatAm. And it was a first business class seat ever, the only one for business class international ever. And it was so turbulent, I called the flight attendant over, I think maybe no fewer than five times to be like, is this okay? Like, this is a long time ago. This is before I

was on the beat and I was just like, Is it okay? And he's like, Yes. And then but it was bad. Have another drink. Yeah, Have another drink. No, it was really bad. Like they didn't have service for the flight. You know, the flight attendants were seated the whole time. But yeah, I try to look at the flight attendants because to them, it's like, I. Mean,

turbulence should feel like not as bad in first class, right? Because the seats are. You're more you're more comfortable. It was like this was before they had lie flat seats and in business class. But it was I didn't enjoy it at all. It was like the biggest waste of Miles ever because I was so nervous. But this was like 2009, 2010, I don't know. Yeah. One

time I was in first class and we had really bad turbulence and like one of the carts fell over and like, people were very upset that one of the carts fell over because it. Could be really dangerous. And like we talked about, those injuries, you know, 17 people, maybe that count will go up. There was a really bad incident on Hawaiian late last year in December

where, you know, dozens of people were hurt and taken to the hospital. I think it was more than 30 people because the turbulence was so bad. So you you can get injured. That's why when that fasten seat belt sign comes on, I mean, you might think it's stupid if the plane is moving up and down or side to side and rattling, but things can fall. And

if you're strapped into your seat, you have a less of a chance of of getting hurt. But I feel like we have and you were just talking about this recently, seen more incidents of bad turbulence like affecting affecting flights. Yeah. So one of the things that researchers have been looking at is how changing climate and changing jet stream, you know, those the strong winds going from

west to east. It's one of those things that, you know, in the winter sometimes if it's very strong, you'll see like the 4.5 hour flight to from New York to London. But then going the other way, it's it's so much worse. So there was a researcher out of the University of Reading who said that by 2050, those incidents can really rise by a lot. That's something

airlines have to deal with. And they have so much technology for weather. But turbulence is a very tricky thing to predict. So is it actually getting worse? There are more incidents of it lately. More people are also flying. But with the jet stream getting stronger, there is some concern that there could be more of these incidents going forward. And every airline handles it a little bit

differently around the world. There are some areas in the world where it's just extremely turbulent. You can't get around that. The Andes are very turbulent. So we did. Talk to a pilot. Yep. Bill Sablesak was at United Airlines recently retired. He was a 737 captain, and he's been flying planes for more than 40 years. So we asked him a lot of questions about turbulence. The place

to start is kind of what is it? And when you're in the cockpit, what do you do when you encounter it? Okay. Well, first of all, what it is, it's the atmosphere. And so, as you know, the atmosphere surrounds the earth we live in and it's constantly moving. It's constantly changing. It's constantly in flux. And you don't see it because the air is clear. But it's

just like a river or an ocean. And it's it's always moving and it's always changing and. Then we take an airplane, we take a metal tube, and we fill it with a lot of people. And then we put it through this ever constantly changing atmosphere. At 80% of the speed of sound. It's not going to be smooth. What creates turbulence? There's all different types of turbulence.

There's clear, clear air turbulence is wake turbulence behind another airplane, just like a speedboat in the ocean or in a river leaves the wake behind it. Airplanes in the sky do the same thing. You don't see it, but it's there. And. It's like I said, the atmosphere is always moving. It could be a totally peaceful day with no weather systems involved. But here in my home,

I live right on the ocean and it's turbulent up there because there's different temperatures. So the air over the ocean cools at a different rate than the air over the land and heat. Rises and cold air descends. So you have all these different currents of air going up and down and sideways. And then you get weather systems that create a lot of turbulence, and then you

get mountains that create turbulence, the Rocky Mountains. And we're doing a lot of my flying in the last few years down to the Bogota, Colombia is the Andes Mountains. So, you know, it's going to be turbulent on the last of flight into Bogota because of the huge Andes Mountains. Out of all your flights and your career that you've piloted, how many didn't have turbulence? A very

small amount. There's always some turbulence out there. And every once in a while you get somebody, luckily, and it's totally smooth, but very few have no turbulence. And, you know, back in the day, there's been the airlines to their credit, you got to give them credit where it's due. And they put a big emphasis on mitigating turbulence injuries because there's a lot of turbulence, injuries all

around the world. And so back in the day, there was really no training. I mean, basically no training. United my former carrier used the company called WSI. Excellent weather forecast. It's right on our iPad. We we go into Continental used to call it the weather room. The pilots used to meet in the weather room to go over the weather and the flight plan and where we're

going and how much you had united change the terminology, different culture. They call it the flight planning area. But you meet in the flight planning area, you bring up your laptop, you put in your flight number, and it's got weather for every airport from New York to Los Angeles. And that's where you're going. And you can look at the turbulence by different altitudes for the entire

route. I mean, it's really phenomenal what what they've done for for planning and forecasting. So that's gotten much, much better. And like I said, there's a lot of turbulence industry. So I assume it's across the whole industry to mitigate those the lawsuits because it was costing him a lot of money from passengers as well as flight attendants. So, you know, to put a real emphasis on

it and they actually go over it and make you do it every training session, we and we go every nine months to training recurrent training pilots. And in this scenario, there's there's always turbulence. You take off and the simulator starts shaking like that and you're you're in the turbulence and you got to do your deal. In the old days, we would just turn on the seat

belt sign. That was it. Now we have to make the people that get paid a lot more than I do think that you have to make a PR announcement. So in addition to turning on the seat belt sign, now we have to make a PR announcement. And the PR announcement is very specific. And if if you know, based on reports from other airplanes in front of

you or from the weather charts or whatever, that there's going to be turbulence ahead, You and I do both. I call on the phone and then I do my PR and that specific PR that my airline is flight attendants, take your jump seats. So flight attendants take your jump seats that keys them into if they're moving about to put their cards away and sit down, they

have some time. If you get into unexpected turbulence because you just went into wait turbulence behind another airplane or something else, then it's flight attendants. Be seated immediately. Be seated immediately. And it's supposed to, in their words, they they drop, they stop and drop. So if they're in the middle of the aisle handing out Cokes when this happens, then they're supposed to just stop the Coke

and drop into an open seat or on the floor of the airplane and hold on. And then we have some other calls and stuff, too. When they get up and it's safe to get up and all that. And it's all part of a thing that they call the Turbulence Action Guide, which is a guide for all this stuff. And when they started enforcing all this stuff

for the pilots that know they're turbulence related, injuries came down significantly. So hopefully they're still there. But the whole key is communication. Okay. So over the last 46 years, has turbulence gotten better, worse, stayed the same? It's no, I think it's it's significantly worse or stronger. And I'm not a meteorologist and I'm not going to get into politics and what's causing it. But I can tell

you as a pilot, the weather patterns have changed. They've gotten a lot worse. Also, the wind patterns have changed the United States generically. The winds are from west to east. And the airlines, that's how they plan the flight. So the flight from New York to Los Angeles is basically an hour longer. In the flight from LA to New York is going westbound. You're into the wind.

Eastbound, you've got the tailwind. I flew flights in the last couple of years where the winds were from the east the whole way. And so all the flights are getting to LA an hour and a half or two hours early. And all the flights going back to the New York area are getting to New York late. So the winds have changed. They also have shifted. So

the jet stream, which used to be over Canada in the summertime, springtime and then wintertime, it gets stronger. It comes down over the middle part of the United States. Now it's shifted down to the Gulf Coast. So there's always a constant line of strong winds over the bottom of the Gulf Coast from like Houston to New Orleans to Pensacola. And there's always weather there. Every day

you bring up the weather maps and there's rain there that's being created by this jet stream that's down low. So the air has gotten more turbulent. The weather has gotten more turbulent and more severe. Generally speaking, I can't prove it by numbers, but in my experience as a pilot, the weather and winds have shifted and changed. Is it up to the captain to turn on the

fasten seatbelt sign? Because isn't it a kind of subjective like what's severe to someone? Yes, it is. It is subjective. And there are definitions in the airman's information manual and the FAA puts out definitions and is from light it there's actually there's turbulence and there's chop, too. So there's chop and turbulence and it goes from light to to severe. So and there's different ways of measuring.

If you look in the federal air regulations and, you know, light chop is, you know, when your cup of coffee has some whitecaps in it and severe turbulence is where it's so bad you actually cannot read the instruments because everything's moving around so much. So yeah, so it's subjective. And when the captain turns on the seatbelt sign. Yes, totally subjective. The old days guys would some

guys would never turn it off, you know, these old school and became one of them, these old school captains with the gray head that I learned so much from. They would just back in the days. They leave it on all the time because if something happens, they're going to get sued. So if I had to sign on, the airline can't get sued and the captain can't

get sued, but then you're training the passengers to not follow the sign. So I was always conscientious and I'd make that part of my PR that welcome aboard that. If the if you see the seatbelt sign on, it's on for a reason. And that reason is your safety. And that's another thing. People don't follow the signs. And then as the older I got, though, the more

understanding I got because I would see these people get up, people especially, you know, up and down the Northeast, Miami to New York, New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, whatever the you know, people, they get up and they do what they want. They don't follow the sign. And guess the most egregious one, I was commuting home from Houston. I was based in Houston at the time, and

I'm sitting in the very back of a United 737 and we're taking off on runway 15 left. I'm going home happy. So thrilled to be going home. We're rolling down the runway and the nose of the airplane is just lifting in the air. So the the main gear is still on the runway. And this old man gets up like two rows in front of me and

he's going to the lab, which is right behind me. I'm in the way in the back and go. Because if we would have rejected the take off or whatever mean, he would have been, God knows where he would. But he's an old man with a prostate issue. He's got to go. So. Right. So became more understanding. So you have to go when they have to go.

And of course, it's never happened to me. Was fortunate that people didn't get hurt on my career and my flights. But the ones that happened, if there was a turbulence related injury, there would. Sometimes get lawyers who sue. And the big question is, was the seatbelt sign up? If the seatbelt sign is on, then they're violating the signs. The flight attendants in the old days to

the flight attendants were told they had to keep them there. Now, with all the disruptive passengers and everything else, guess the advice to them is to just advise them to stay down. They can't make them get down. And how about the different routes? Like you were kind of saying this earlier, but within the US, are certain routes more turbulent? I know. I remember flying from San

Francisco into Denver being one of the the Denver most nerve wracking Yeah. The Denver area is always not always, but it's more up than not turbulent because of the Rocky Mountains out there. And so it's always and it's always the winds, too. So the winds change turbulent there. Um, some of the worst turbulence I've had is actually in the Northeast and especially springtime of winter time.

And you get the really strong cold fronts that come through. And after the cold front comes through, then you got the gusting turbulent winds always from the northwest. And so that makes it more difficult. In addition to that, then you got that's when you have to use and you guys are familiar, both the three airports in the New York area, LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark, the runway

is all in the exact same direction because they build the runways into the winds. So the winds, the runways are all exactly the same. So when the winds are when the cold front comes through, the winds are very gusty and strong from the northwest. So you got to land on the northwest runway, which is runway one three and LaGuardia and one three and in Newark and

is one, three and Kennedy. And they all have circling approaches to it in order to get those runways. So you bounce along into that wind and then you got to do in Newark, it's called the stadium visual approach. So you do stadium visual approach over the Meadowlands and you land on this little short runway in LaGuardia. Do you do the expressway visual approach? You go up

the expressway and make the steep left turn around the old Shea Stadium with Citi Field and you land into the northwest. And so but some of the strongest winds in my career were there. And it seems always to it happened to my wife and we did a lot of training. But it's always a new captain. Guaranteed your first leg after getting signed off from Iowa, you're

free to go fly. A guarantee you it's going to be on a cold front day landing on a super turbulent crosswind. And that's what happened to me way back in the day in the 727 and was landing in coming up in Tampa, Tampa, Florida, to Washington, Washington National Airport. And a really strong cold front had just come through when they were landing on runway 36. But

the winds were gusting to almost 50 miles an hour. And so there's another little runway there. Uh, runway 31 more to the northwest, but there's no instrument approaches to it. So I did that and I did a visual approach to that. So it came right up the Potomac River. And then there's no instruments to it, just a visual runway. So some of the artists were not

hardest, but most challenging approaches in my career were in the Northeast after a cold front had come through. Were you scared? You get scared afterwards. You don't when you're flying working. That's. That's my career. They train you. The training is really good. And you you get scared afterwards when you get home and you start thinking about it, that's when you get scared. But when you're doing

it, you don't. You don't feel it. What do you say to. People who are afraid of turbulence and feel like the plane could break apart? The planes are designed there for and could give you the numbers, but they're designed to plus 2.5 G's or whatever. And they literally are. The movie Airplane with Joe Petrone was remember Joe Petrone, the guy, and he's trying to get the

airplane in Chicago by the snow. And he says a 707 is a tank. And you know what it is? The airplanes, the manufacturers have done such a tremendous job with those airplanes. And they they built tanks. And so it's not going to you know, nothing's going to fall off, hopefully. Is it I mean, is it possible? You know, I think people always worry the plane is

going to, you know, fall out of the sky. Is that, you know, what's the what's the what are the what are the worst things that could happen in turbulence? That the biggest thing that the biggest bad thing that happened in turbulence is people are going to puke all over the inside of the airplane. I mean, that's that's it. Nothing's going to fall off. Nothing's going to

nothing's going to break because it is so. Well. But I mean, if you get in, you know, I mean, look at the hurricane hunters. The the Air Force and the NOAA guys go out and they fly in hurricanes, you know, and they come back safely. You know, wings don't fall off. The engines don't quit. They can happen. You know, if you if you fight through the

middle of a thunderstorm, which is like a super has more power than a, you know, atomic bomb if you fight through a thunderstorm. Um, yeah, that that can tear an airplane apart. And and there was a crash. It was actually here in Miami, Florida back in the the mid to late 60s. So Northwest Airlines, Northwest Orient Airlines 707 that took off and flew through a thunderstorm.

And literally it it tore the wings off and tore the engine. But normal turbulence not in a thunderstorm. So that's why you don't fly through thunderstorms, which is why you have a thunderstorm, you know, on the arrival route into one of the New York airports. You can't fly through it. You have to go around it. And that's another thing that has gotten much, much better over

the years is the weather radar on board the airplane. The 737 Max is the most wonderful weather raider that I've ever seen. Back in the day when I started out, the weather radars were they call them black and white. It wasn't black and white. It's green. Just different shades of green on the weather display. Now they're multicolored. So you got severe turbulence because of the weather

is magenta. And then you've got red for, you know, really bad turbulence and you get different yellow and green and on and on. The weather radar screen it point it paints it a beautiful picture. And you'd have to be sleeping to fly through something like that. So anyhow, but that's the problem with the, you know, summertime in the in all airspace, but especially in New York

because there's so much traffic up there and all the arrival and departure corridors, the highways in the sky is so close together normally. And then you put up one little thunderstorm there and you can't play through it. So you got to go around it. But in order to go around it, you're in the path of the other airplane that's on the highway in this sky to

LaGuardia. So the controllers have to separate them all like that. And that's another thing, judgment. You learn after 46 years, you learn down here in Florida, there's little white puffy clouds and you think it's nothing, right? It's not a it's not associated with the weather system. Those could be some of the most little vicious deals that you get into. I mean, you could really So I

always error on the. Abundance of caution. So if I see the little puffy clouds, I'll tell the flight attendants to go ahead and sit down and finish up and take their seats. Because what looks like this little not even painting on the weather radar. So it's judgment, not even painting on the weather radar, but you can get hammered. And then, of course, it always is the

opposite. You tell them to sit down. It's going to be smooth as silk. If you don't tell them to sit down, you're going to get hammered, guaranteed. So it's a judgment, subjective judgment thing based on experience and what you have seen. If you're facing clear air turbulence, how easy is it for you as a pilot to change your altitude or fly around it? You can try.

And sometimes that's become more difficult, too, because there's so much more air traffic. So you see. You're feeling it or you see it, but you can't ask the air traffic controller to go around it or to change your attitude because he or she is so busy talking to all the other airplanes on the frequency. So you can't sometimes you can't even get a word in, slow

down what they call the waters area, which is the off shore airspace to the east of Florida. But when you're flying from New York down to the Caribbean during what they call the waters area, it's non radar. So they're going to have radar and they don't even have air traffic controllers. They have a radio facility, a radio operator that's actually out on Long Island called New

York Radio. And you tell New York radio you've got to plan for this because it takes time. So you have to tell New York radio that you're getting, quote, beat up here. It's turbulent and you like a new altitude or there's a thunderstorm. So you have to start planning because you see the thunderstorm. But you can't wait till you're right there. You get to start planning

because you have to get on the radio and ask New York radio to relay to the air traffic controllers because it's not radar to get permission to change your altitude. So you always have to think ahead way, way, way ahead. Is there a certain altitude where the air is smoother? It might be and it all depends and it all changes. And you could be really rough

at 31,000ft, put down at 29,000ft. It might be smoke. And it's just a it's just a guessing game, really, just based on and the predictions. Wsi The National Weather Service, they predict the turbulence based on altitude. So you can see ahead of time before the flight even leaves if they have all these reports, National Weather Service, whatever, that it's turbulent up high, then United Flight plans

it down low to stay out of the turbulence. And sometimes you get up there you know I bet we joke WSI is the best weather money can buy and it's wrong. It's dead wrong sometimes. So it says it's going to be bumpy here and smooth there and you get there and it's just literally the opposite. So you have asked the air traffic controllers what other airplanes

are reporting, and of course, the controllers get sick of it. And the bad weather day, my God, that's what they do for eight hours, is talk about the rough, rough rides that everyone's getting. And, you know, they get they get sick of it. So their standard response is, oh, yeah, it smooths up in 45 miles. Well, that's the end of their sector. What causes those sudden

drops of altitude. Sudden drops of altitude? Well, hopefully you don't get too much of that where you really drop altitudes, but that's the different convective heat and temperature differences. One of the things I didn't mention earlier, but, you know, on a hot summer day in Texas, you had the thermals. So there's not a cloud in the sky, but you get all that hot air rising. So

you're going into Houston and the hot air is rising and you're flying through it, but it's rising at different rates. So you're bouncing along there through the different the thermals, that's what they call thermals, but different changes of temperature and the air. Thank you so much for the time. You're very welcome. I won't be scared now of turbulence. So it turns out that turbulence the majority

of the time isn't that dangerous. Yeah the vast majority. And what's important is that people always listen to flight attendant instructions. And when the captain is saying that you have to sit down and the flight attendants are saying you have to sit down and buckle up, it makes it that much more important. All right. Well, next time I'm flying, I'm going to feel even more safe.

Good. How about you? Does that make you feel better? Yeah, a little bit better. Got to get a good mix mix tape. Calm me down. All right. Well, thank you for joining us on this episode about turbulence. Let us know if turbulence scares you in the comments. This has been now boarding. We'll see you next time. Now boarding is produced by Aaron Black and Leslie Josephs

with Camera by Liam Mayes, Animations by Jason Reginato with support from senior production Manager Kathy Mavrakis, supervising producer Jeniece Pettitt and executive producer Camelia Angelova.