News & Advice

The Best Way to Ride Out Air Turbulence

For starters, don't grip the armrests.
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Turbulence injuries more than doubled in 2016, and this year isn’t looking too much smoother: Already in 2017, turbulence caused injury to 27 passengers on a bumpy Aeroflot flight in May, and earlier this month, another nine passengers, who The Aviation Herald says were “thrown against the cabin ceiling and then the floor," were injured on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Hong Kong. The peak summer travel period and its associated convective weather activity have only just begun.

While there are a number of ways to conquer an outright fear of flying—even Hollywood film sets are used in therapy for the phobia—there’s no one remedy for easing the anxiety passengers commonly experience when the ride gets bumpy. But here are four suggestions that may help:

Log on and check the forecast.

The website TurbulenceForecast.com is regularly updated with detailed maps marked with zones of reported and potential turbulence around the world. If the bumps are interrupting in-flight service or just seem to be lasting interminably long, log on to the in-flight WiFi (if available on your flight) and head to TurbulenceForecast for an idea of just how much longer you'll be flying through choppy air.

Trust in the flight crew.

Periods of turbulence last an average of only 10 to 15 minutes, though it may seem like an eternity. Dr. Chris Manno, a pilot, professor, author, and current Boeing 737 captain for a major U.S. airline, is trained to deal with turbulence, but notes that airplanes are just as primed to take whatever weather is ahead. “Structurally, our aircraft is designed to withstand stress much higher than anything we might encounter in flight," he explains to Condé Nast Traveler. "When we encounter turbulence, rest assured that we are immediately taking whatever action we can to smooth the ride out—just give us a minute.”

Bring on the bouncing.

"The statistics will tell you that as soon as you buckle that seat belt, your chances of ending up hurt are infinitesimal, but that bit of rationality alone is never enough because the fear itself is irrational," says Steve Casner, research psychologist at NASA and author of the book Careful: A User's Guide to Our Injury-Prone Minds. Casner shared his own oddball solution with Traveler:

"I was still freaked out by turbulence after I became a commercial pilot. Here’s what eventually worked for me. Whenever turbulence started bouncing the airplane, I bounced along with it and made a point of bouncing even more than the turbulence. I kind of exaggerated it, like I was having some kind of fit. After I’d done it a few times, it just became a game I played and the turbulence just magically stopped bothering me. The fear literally left my mind and body and it never came back. The best thing about it is that it also worked on other nervous passengers around me. They seemed to pick up on my confidence and calm."

Casner's approach is somewhat similar to this writer's own method, which involves closing my eyes so I don’t see the movement of the cabin, and crossing my arms to resist the urge to grip the armrests. I bounce in my seat without connection to the structure of the plane, or items fixed to it, and the more abrupt jolts of turbulence seem less severe.

Write your name on a piece of paper.

During a Today Show segment this month, Captain Ron Nielsen, a pilot and 40-year veteran of the airline industry who teaches fear of flying classes, offered his go-to solution for turbulence anxiety: "Put a pen in the opposite hand than what you normally use, and write your name,” he advised. "It first causes [the passenger] to focus extra-hard on what she's doing, because she doesn't normally write with her other hand. And the second thing is, it's actually crossing over her motor function in her brain, using the other side of her brain from what she would normally do.” The disruption in thinking is enough of a distraction to minimize your attention on the turbulence.