Flight attendants amass thousands of flying hours over their careers and experience countless turbulence events. These incidents vary from light bumps to a roller-coaster ride that terrifies their paying customers. New recruits quickly learn that the vast majority of turbulence isn’t a safety issue and lose any nervousness they may have about it. Cabin crew also benefit from advice from pilots about when turbulence is coming and knowledge of its causes, so that they can adapt to it.

In this article, learn about what makes cabin crew so relaxed about turbulence, and how climate change could be making their jobs harder. Finally, we cover how aircraft manufacturers are taking steps to make turbulence less of an issue, making cabin crew members’ jobs easier.

They Know Turbulence Is Rarely A Safety Concern

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The more flying experience you have, the more you experience turbulence and understand that it isn’t usually a safety issue. Few people have spent more time in the sky than cabin crew. They know that turbulence will usually be light to moderate, often not even requiring them to stop service. When traveling through more severe turbulence, they trust themselves to deal with it, following their training to ensure passengers stay safe and comfortable. These procedures have been developed and followed for decades.

They will also trust their pilot to take the necessary evasive action to avoid the worst turbulence. Modern fly-by-wire technology helps aircraft safely navigate unavoidable turbulence by allowing flight computers to make rapid, precise adjustments to keep the jet stable.

Overall, pilots and cabin crew see turbulence as a nuisance rather than a major problem. It should be respected so that everyone remains safe, but there is no need to fear it.

They Know When To Expect It

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One reason that passengers can find turbulence so unsettling is that it can be unexpected. This is particularly the case if the weather forecast looks fine before traveling. Flight attendants know better. Certain routes experience unusually high turbulence for many reasons, such as when the flight is over high mountains. Cabin crew members will see they have been assigned to a route they know will be turbulent, and prepare appropriately.

Travel + Leisure has identified the 10 domestic US routes with the highest turbulence. You can expect a bumpy ride if you are taking any of these trips:

There are several distinctive features of these highly turbulent routes. Firstly, plenty of them are fairly short. There is less time during the flight for stable cruising, and a greater proportion of the flight is spent ascending and descending through the clouds, when turbulence is most likely. Secondly, some of these routes involve mountain ranges like the Appalachian Mountains. Mountainous terrain is a particular problem on the approach to Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the worst turbulence tends to occur in mountainous regions.

They Know The Signs Of Turbulence

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Beyond understanding which routes are most likely to face turbulence, experienced cabin crew will also recognize the signs of coming turbulence. Many of these signs are easy to identify, meaning that you can predict turbulence like a flight attendant. One example is dark terrain on a hot day, which causes air to rise, matched by a compensating downward current. An aircraft may become unsettled when traveling through air that moves in two directions simultaneously.

You can also predict turbulence if you are in the window seat by looking at the clouds. Clouds with a solid, smooth shape are less likely to cause turbulence if your aircraft travels through them. Meanwhile, clouds that are jagged with rolling edges show that the air is not as stable. Flying through these clouds will be more unsettling for the aircraft.

You can also predict turbulence by taking steps before your flight. Cabin crew might also check the weather forecast beforehand to understand if they are in for a bumpy ride. This is a little more complicated than simply looking for storms. Instead, look at air pressure maps. Fast-moving cold fronts can create particularly turbulent air, as the wind will shift direction when moving between warm and cold fronts.

They Trust The Pilot

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Turbulence is an everyday part of the flying experience. Aircraft experience moderate to “severe-or-greater” turbulence 68,000 times every year, and it usually has no effect on the aircraft’s safety. However, cabin crew also know that their pilot will have been through extensive training to detect and avoid turbulence that could cause problems. The fact that 75% of turbulence is predictable 18 hours before an aircraft is due to travel through it means that aircraft miss the vast majority of potentially turbulent air.

A pilot’s work begins long before passengers set foot on an aircraft. They will adjust their flight plan based on weather reports and forecasts. Firstly, ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) provides current operational and weather information for the airports involved in the flight. Next, METAR (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) is a weather report specifically for an airport. Finally, TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) provides a forecast rather than an observation for an airport.

Pilots employ a host of measures to avoid turbulence. This includes climbing, descending, or routing around turbulent air. However, avoiding bumps isn’t always possible. When this is the case, the pilot will advise the cabin crew, so they know when to stop service and return to their seats.

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Turbulence 101: What Pilots Wish Passengers Knew

This article serves as reassurance that turbulence rarely poses a danger to passengers and requires little effort from pilots to navigate.

Turbulence Is Becoming More Of An Issue

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There is an acceptance among cabin crew that dealing with turbulence is part of the job. They’ll have to deal with more of it in the coming years because turbulence will only get worse. This is primarily due to climate change.

The table below shows the results of a study on changes in turbulence levels since 1979. It shows that turbulence across all levels of severity has increased. More concerningly, the greater the turbulence’s severity, the greater the increase:

The increase caused by climate change is concerning because it has most impacted clean air turbulence. This is turbulence that occurs in clear skies at high altitude, where aircraft can normally fly smoothly. Such turbulence is invisible to the naked eye and onboard sensors, rendering it almost impossible to avoid. Pilots have to resort to reporting to each other where they have experienced this phenomenon.

Paul Williams, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Reading, explained to the BBC how this turbulence is connected to climate change: “In simple terms, climate change is increasing the temperature difference between the warm and cold air masses that collide to form the jet stream in the upper atmosphere. This effect is making the jet stream less stable and allowing more turbulence to break out.”

Boeing Patents Could Reduce Turbulence

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Recent Boeing patent activity alludes to how the manufacturer is hoping to make turbulence less of an issue on board its aircraft. They could make cabin crew members unconcerned about turbulence again amid the issues caused by climate change. The first Boeing patent is for “Quantitative Measurement of Air Turbulence.” This technology would make use of the hundreds of personal devices that passengers carry onto aircraft.

Passengers would be able to download a measurement application, which would report vibrational and positional data of their device. This application would generate a vast amount of data for the manufacturer, which Boeing’s data analysts can scour through and combine with weather data to generate accurate turbulence predictions. However, the idea is still deeply theoretical. Boeing doesn’t yet know how it would remove other noise from the data.

Another strategy comes from Boeing’s Patent EP1842081A2. This patent connects better with what is going on outside the aircraft through a system that could remotely sense turbulence between a receiver and a satellite by identifying alterations in intensity, phase, and frequency of the satellite’s signal. Boeing hopes to combine multiple line-of-sight measurements, leading to the construction of 3D turbulence models that pilots can use to help plan their flights and adjust their route mid-flight.