Severe Turbulence passing over Greenland/Storm Ciarán 31/10/23.

[@yasminbarry7941]

I was scrolling down looking for the "not severe" people. It didn't take long. Everybody's gangsta from the comfort of their living room.

[@smoocher]

I would probably be that stereotypical person on the plane screaming lol

[@richardtibbitts3841]

Well, it wasn't.

[@edwardrichardson5567]

At the most moderate chop..

[@scottfinnie.copisamajordf.5758]

Go away

[@joeterra.t]

​@@richardtibbitts3841Unless you were typing this from a similar level of turbulence, you literally proved her point.

[@Sweetie8387]

I am crippled with fear over flying but I make myself do it. I actually find these videos really useful ti show me yes turbulence can happen and yes it’s horrible but they all survived and the plane was fine. Thank you 🙏🏻

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@Sweetie8387 Several airlines run Fear Of Flying courses, British Airways and easyJet to name but two in the UK. These typically involve a classroom session followed by an hour or so flight. Flying tens of thousands of miles each month, it's easy to take it for granted, but it brings something special to the day reassuring nervous passengers. The lumps and bumps are nothing to be afraid of as long as you're strapped in😉.

[@Drogan_Pušotravić]

Flight Air France 447 wasn't such luck ...

[@coach2208]

I don't fly, period.

[@guiltseeker]

@@coach2208 i drive and fly, and get buses and trains, flying is statistically safer, plus you get to see other places all over the world. Do it !, but i have a feeling you'll say no.

[@coach2208]

@@guiltseeker had a bad experience , that's why I don't fly.

[@Nallisn]

I still can’t shake the feeling of we’re about to fall out of the sky when experiencing severe turbulence. I can never get used to it

[@globalvisualizationgis2855]

Same

[@heatherstub]

You're not alone. This sounds exactly like what we encountered at the start and for the next 20 minutes or so flying into Chicago on June 21, 1971. For us, they went from severe to extreme when the flight attendants were instructed to remove and store any shoes on people's feet that couldn't be buckled, tied or strapped. This was before the sophisticated radar we have today. The pilot was trying to keep the altitude high enough, because he was concerned that we'd hit wind sheer. We did! I never thought an airplane can fall 6,000 feet in 10 seconds, but when you have as much wind pushing down on the plane as it did ours, we got the warning. "Hold on people; there's gonna be one hell of a bump!" The pilot said about 30 seconds before it happened. We also flipped forward and came back up, not before the front landing gear was ripped from the DC-8. I lost consciousness for a few seconds, as did others. Many screamed, and a man had a heart attack during the event. He and a little baby had to be evacuated once we landed and were taken to the hospital. Once we disembarked, we were all checked out by medical personel at the airport terminal and sent on our way. I had to board a Boeing 737 -- a little, tiny jet by today's standards, and headed to Moline, Illinois an hour and a half later. I still get nervous to this day when we encounter turbulence. Did you know that a plane can fall up to 15x the speed of terminal velocity and even more when wind sheer forces a plane down? We were very fortunate to have a WWII fighter pilot flying our plane on that day. I was only 6-years-old, but I remember it like it just happened.

[@guiltseeker]

@@heatherstub was it a bad landing without any landing front landing gear ?

[@lorettamulkey7508]

You can tell they fly a lot. Nobody is freaking out.

[@olympe95880]

Yeah then you meet me, over 50+ flight taken, everyone of them with 1 or plus panic attacks xD. I don't scream tho i just faint and cry haha

[@timallison8560]

that is moderate turbulence. i experienced severe one time. don't want it again. you know its severe when things go flying. food carts will topple over, bags and shoes and things will fly all around. people will be lifted from their seats.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Well, you obviously weren't on that flight... None of that happened because everything was put away and everyone was strapped in. We were lucky because we had about 30 minutes warning so were totally ready for it. What the video doesn't show is what it felt like. If you watch to the view from the window you can see the jet blast moving relative to the window and just how much the aircraft is actually moving around. And at risk of repeating myself, it was enough that the Captain felt the aircraft get knocked sideways so violently that he commented that it was the first time in 35 years that he had felt his seat get slammed sideways and upon landing at LAX the aircraft was subject to a turbulence check because of the severity.

[@Progressivelyyou]

Im confused at the people saying this is light. Have you watched the entire thing? Im not one to be afraid of turbulence and have gone through a very bad flight. I usually find these videos mid... but there are instances, for sure, in this clip, where it gets pretty damn rocky. That is not light. The people were just strapped tight in and not yelling.

[@brucesmith9144]

This is moderate turbulence.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

​@@brucesmith9144Clearly you weren't on this flight. The entire episode lasted about 25 minutes and was severe enough for the Captain to share that he had been knocked sideways in his seat,(a first in his 35 year career), and for a severe turbulence event to be recorded in the AML. This airline prides itself first and foremost on the safety of it's customers. Hence the exceptionally well prepared cabin, passengers and crew. Other airlines might choose to carry out meal services whilst negotiating thunderstorms, and whilst that makes for exciting videos and dramatic headlines, I know which approach I prefer.

[@ruddywashington6502]

I know this feeling 😢😢😢😢 It is never a pleasant one

[@brucesmith9144]

When you fly enough, it is normal. As long as the wings don’t snap off, everything is fine.

[@RebeccaLRodgers2024]

My worst nightmare

[@BidenOwesMeGasMoney]

Isn’t facing a Nile Croc 🐊 your worst nightmare?

[@erikaliseron4876]

O my God scary

[@amandamikmik3568]

The same here

[@globalvisualizationgis2855]

Me too

[@mariadlaura]

God. I even don’t know how to explain what I feel about it :((

[@markfortuin7111]

Nicely done. I admire your courage to film given the intensity & level of turbulence. 💯

[@RichardLewis-g4e]

I would have been needing the restroom!

[@rickyvalentine5779]

This is the reason I don’t like riding on a plane even when they’re fascinating

[@mutofv]

Cuz of turbulence? Its the most normal thing on a flight lol. It has never taken an aircraft down.

[@heatherstub]

Wow! I do wish this had been captured in stereo, because you could hear more clearly everything as it happened. Great job, though. That was pretty rough.

[@SopranoAlive]

Scary ride, and how appropriate, as the date posted with this video is October 31 - Halloween.

[@hugostiglitz47]

Wowww. You can tell how bad it is when the contrail moves up and down. Id be pretty nervous

[@gabrielagaray8567]

Me parece no viajo más en avion.Muy feo pasar por esto a pesar de que el avión no se caiga aunque es un porcentaje muy bajo que sucede y debido al cambio climático dicen que van a ser más frecuentes

[@trueloveingod2691]

I’ve been through severe sudden turbulence. It is both terrifying and painful, potentially damaging or lethal. We dropped over 1000 feet suddenly, the plane was bouncing all over the place, and the pressure in the cabin made it feel like your head, eyes, and ears were going to explode, extreme pain. And lightning hit the plane causing St. Elmo’s fire, balls of electric fire, like tumbleweeds, went rolling up the aisles. This was on a flight from Nashville to New York in February of 1995. I haven’t flown since.

[@scottfinnie.copisamajordf.5758]

Never happened.

[@robertos2198]

If there is a huge crazy turbulence and I keep my seatbelt on I am more likely to die of an heart attack due to my panic than anything else....

[@meinv19]

This cameraman sits in the back seat. No wonder it was so shaken.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@meinv19 Sat in 53J. Camera held to the armrest to try and keep it relatively stable.

[@luftwaffell]

​@@wotchyadoingalan approve, same route, but first time i was in the middle part of A332, like 40 row (right on the wing section) the flight was smooth asf until landing, in Shanghai were strong wind gusts, like 16 m/s. On other hand, same route, but my seat was deep in rear part of aircraft 65A, that was such an unpleasant experience, plane was in light-moderate turbulence for 1 hour, on all length of our flight was small sessions of turbulence, but it felt different than omw to PVG. Now i'm booking seats only in front or middle part of plane

[@gakebatle149]

They are so terrified I can hear their silence.

[@Sue-vh5fc]

Surprised there were no comforting announcements! 😮 I would have had a severe panic attack!!! 😂😂

[@wotchyadoingalan]

There were, before during and after, both from the flight crew and the cabin crew. There's none during this clip, but it takes about half an hour to cross Greenland and this is only ~8 minutes of it.

[@dceuro399]

The turbulence at times is quite distressing… and you can see this is a flight filled with elderly experienced travelers. That’s why you see no form of panic or screaming. Had this been a flight over Spain or Portugal or with locals the screams would’ve been deafening. I’ve been to 146 countries since 2007! I used to hate flying I taught myself how to accept the joy of the travel experience and let go of fear. Even in the worst scenarios I’m calm. However that little voice in the back is always there at times like this…

[@fredericojose721]

Turbulência não derruba avião mas solta o intestino.

[@johnmoss8230]

Must do a hell of a job on your nerves

[@wotchyadoingalan]

I think the only thing that would faze me is hearing the engines wind down in flight...🤔

[@dimitrakapa4887]

I was in brest france....ciaran destroy everything ....😢

[@mollyharper4040]

Hi Alan, I'd love to use this video in a documentary I am working on about turbulence - would that be ok? Thanks :)

[@davebecks10]

No "what's going on" words now?😅

[@ae747sp5]

Better during the day than night?

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@ae747sp5 Not necessarily, but that said, westbound trans Atlantic tends to be day time and eastbound at night. Much of it depends on the strength and direction of any Jetstreams together with how they interact with Greenland. I have had perfectly smooth flights crossing over Greenland against the Jetstreams, (see my video titled "The second fastest way to cross Greenland") and somewhat turbulent flights a couple of hundred miles to the south. And a strong tail wind can be just as rough as a strong headwind. It all depends on how the air is moving at any particular point. When explaining the turbulence within the air, I liken it to the wake of a barge on a river... You get the bow wave and subsequent wake that ripples evenly either side, but long after both the barge and wake have passed there's a deeper swirling eddy from where the propellers have churned through the water... The ripples of the wake are pretty predictable and might rock you about a bit, but the eddys can affect you in unpredictable ways. Air is a liquid and moves in a similar way to water but is alot less dense so the effects are more subtle. The turbulence in this video was the result of a strong Jetstream being impacted by a storm system as both tried to cross Greenland at the same time. We had climbed to about 41,000 to get above the worst of it, but I suspect that even if we had flown a more southerly route we would still have been impacted by the displaced air. By contrast, clear air turbulence is the effect of those deeper seated eddys... Much more short lived, isolated events but potentially more dramatic as they tend to be totally unexpected.

[@suresht.r261]

Good.. they have worn seatbelt’s probably after captain’s announcement

[@wotchyadoingalan]

And the crew going through the cabin ensuring that everyone was actually wearing their belts. It might seem annoying that we pester people about wearing their belts during the flight but it's for good reason. Take the Singapore Airlines incident last week as an example. At least one fatality and several badly injured and diverted to Bangkok... You'll note that the BA flight on the same route at around the same time had none of those issues. It's pretty straightforward really... If you're strapped in, you won't be able to hit the ceiling. If you can't hit the ceiling then you can't break your head on the ceiling or break the ceiling with your head. And if you're stupid enough to be serving food in those circumstances, then your focus is in the wrong place.

[@oliverwashington850]

😎 It look dark up front!!!

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@oliverwashington850 The 777-300 is a long aircraft, but this is mostly because of configuration of this aircraft😉 Although it doesn't help that the bulkhead at the front of this cabin is a very dark grey...

[@marcusmalmquist773]

Do they really allow cellphone in airplane during flight??

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@marcusmalmquist773 Only in Airplane Mode😉

[@kuldipatwal5375]

Which airline

[@KotiChennayya]

This is the reason i avoid flights i use land or sea travel

[@ThePatriot-gm1fg]

If you're living in the USA it means you probably won't ever get to Asia, Australia or Europe though.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

It's perfectly safe... Well, as long as you're strapped in. Turbulence injuries are caused by people or stuff smacking into things. Imagine driving at 100 over a rough field. Would you rather be sat in a seat with a belt on or stood up in the back of a pick up truck? Turbulence is the same thing. It will bounce you around but it doesn't have to be dangerous.

[@ronaldcharan2705]

Sea travel is worse. Cruise ships can get rocked hard in bad weather and things will fly from one end to the other.

[@dreamthedream8929]

They can go by ship, surely at least to europe and plenty of people perhaps do so​@@ThePatriot-gm1fg

[@ThePatriot-gm1fg]

@dreamthedream8929 Yeah but now with the middle east tensions that would be unwise. What routing would they take? I'm pretty sure the car will go on a ship while they fly.

[@Skywalker66666]

In September the Oktoberfest begins.

[@Potapota_Omochi]

逃げ場のない空の上でこの揺れに遭遇したら乗った事を後悔すると思う🫨

[@sterlingstroebel]

Definitely not severe, or even moderate for that matter. Basic turbulence.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Thank you for your opinion. Obviously you weren't on that flight, but as someone who was, I can assure you that if the cabin crew are strapped in, then it is severe. Basic turbulence as you put it, mild as we call it, won't even stir your gin and tonic. Moderate turbulence will make your G+T splash all over your lap and severe turbulence has the potential to throw it across the cabin. This video doesn't look very dramatic but that's because the crew had prepared the cabin as if for landing. So apologies for no trollies or people flying around and bits of aircraft trim falling from the ceiling.

[@suresht.r261]

Moderate & am sure captain would have cautioned

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@suresht.r261 Severe and he did.

[@SaraBosse-f2z]

a siege move as if it is not bowlting in floor

[@urszulajaskierska3111]

To jest podobno normalne w każdym locie,tak jazda samochodem po wybojach,ale ja osobiście "zesrałabym" się że strachu☝️🤣🙈

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Choć było źle, było sto razy lepiej niż lądowanie Ryanaira…

[@vonqq9669]

Nowhere close to severe at the very worst it’s moderate-strong

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@vonqq9669 Turbulence comes in many forms, this being the result of flying into a Jetstream whilst passing over a substantial storm system just as it was crossing some of the highest terrain on Greenland. Again, this video is about 9 minutes of something that lasted much longer, (See my more recent Greenland video for how long it takes to cross Greenland), clearly you weren't on this flight and if you watch the video through, you'll see the altitude of the aircraft along with just how much it was moving around relative to the direction of travel. The cabin was extremely well prepared and everyone, including the crew was strapped in. I make no apologies for the lack of drama, blood and gore. If you see any of that on a flight then it's either totally unexpected and/or the passengers and crew aren't adequately prepared. You might experience more abrupt turbulence taking off or landing around southeast Asia, but it tends to be short-lived and generally in conditions that more responsible airlines would not operate in... Much better to wait five minutes than to take off into a monsoon.

[@vonqq9669]

@@wotchyadoingalan I completely agree, that description is Moderate turbulnce. If you watch other videos of turbulnce which are of greater intensity you will see the fuselage shake/drop much more than this, or the wing flex much more.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@vonqq9669 Had this been on a 737 rather than a 777 then it would have given the illusion of being worse in the same way that a small boat in a rough sea will feel worse than a big ship in the same conditions... that doesn't alter the conditions. Watch the video as it is filmed out of the window and looks how sharply the jet blast from the engine is moving in relation to the aircraft

[@antoniopadilla2489]

What airline is this?

[@wotchyadoingalan]

All I can say is that it's a flight from LHR to LAX on a Boeing 777-300. I cannot and will not name the airline and will neither confirm nor deny any guesses made by anyone as the ability to film these videos is a privilege afforded to me and not a right.

[@Lambik79]

​Oh for f3cks sake! @antoniopadilla2489 If this really is a 777-300 it's either BA or American Airlines. @@wotchyadoingalan Alan my dude, stop trying to sound like some big deal. No airline is going to come after you for telling this. you're not that important

[@riding4beers889]

@@wotchyadoingalan What a very odd thing to say.

[@ClassySexy82]

😂😂....okay. Nice video. I like how you filmed out of the window to show everything was okay even in sever turbulence.​@@wotchyadoingalan

[@a.h.9679]

United for sure

[@4af]

Severe? No, it's Clickbait.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Hardly🤣

[@jadranair23]

Klm?

[@MuhammadQasim-w6y]

O my god

[@shaikhsalmanattari119]

😮😮🫵😦😧😟

[@allesanders_20]

😨

[@Ahuntsicspotter]

KLM aircraft.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Close but no cigar😉

[@Ahuntsicspotter]

@@wotchyadoingalan What was your final destination?

[@wotchyadoingalan]

@@Ahuntsicspotter LAX

[@Ahuntsicspotter]

@@wotchyadoingalan AMS-LAX KLM Boeing 777.

[@wotchyadoingalan]

​@@AhuntsicspotterWell it was a 777.

[@duartesimoes508]

I bet you were never caught flying a light aircraft in turbulence. You bang your head, suffer G forces, the yoke is stronger than you, you hear the airframe squeaking and God Almighty telling you to come up. From that day you develop PTSD. 😨

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Worst flight to date was circa 1987, I was just 11... Just before Christmas flying from LGW to GCI in a Shorts 330... An unpressurized 33 seat twin turboprop. There was a series of thunderstorms working their way up the English Channel. That flight took over twice the normal time and most of it was spent one one side or the other dodging the lightning and squalls. I don't recall being scared but I vividly remember the constantly changing pitch of the engine noise and the sensation of rolling, dropping and climbing as the aircraft clawed its way forwards and the rain battering against the fuselage.

[@dreamthedream8929]

​@@wotchyadoingalanwhy werent you scared though? How? This is the question. Obviously this person even mentions ptsd but you still got on other flights after that experience

[@air6809]

This is not even moderate turbulence….

[@wotchyadoingalan]

It was severe enough for the skipper to comment afterwards that it was the first time in 35 years of flying that he had been knocked sideways in his seat. Also the crew in the forward galley were unable to see the aft end of the aisle due to the flex in the fuselage. In the footage from the perspective of the rearmost row note the floor, seats and overhead lockers all moving in different directions, and note just how much the exhaust stream from the #2 engine is moving around relative to the actual position of the engine. It didn't feel unsafe or overly dramatic because we were expecting it and the crew had fully prepared for it, including communicating what was coming to the passengers. Granted, there was no headline grabbing significant change in altitude that you might expect from clear air turbulence, but note that not all turbulence is equal.

[@ThePatriot-gm1fg]

Of course it is. Just the first few seconds look like moderate turbulence to me.

[@kilojeire2011]

get a grip. this is easily moderate turbulence. this is not light chop, especially if the cabin crew were told to be seated.

[@beofile7]

There is light, moderate, severe and extreme. Where is this?mentalist uploader!

[@wotchyadoingalan]

Over Greenland, heading west.

[@jasontipton8430]

That’s between light and moderate chop

[@sanjamladenovic2947]

Meni je ovo uzasno mislim da bih vristala i plakala