What is the roughest weather...

[timmcat]

..you have ever flown through in a civil flight, and are you ever asked by ATC to fly through conditions which you would normally avoid?

[Pilot Pete]

Depends how you want ot classify it, but if you mean bumpiest then I would say the flight I did from the island of Islay back to Glasgow with 3 passengers in a Cessna 310 a couple of years back.

It was forecast as 'severe turbulence below 6000' in the Scottish FIR' and they were right. It was howling but steady just about down the runway at both airports. I briefed the passengers before we even boarded that it was going to be very unpleasant but safe enough knowing the limitations of the aircraft and my abilities. The decision was theirs as to whether they wanted to go or not(I had already decided that I was willing to go) and they decided they had to get back to connect with the BA shuttle to London that afternoon.

We took off after about a 200m roll the wind was so strong and as soon as we were airborne the bumps started. We were only climbing to something like 5000' so we were in it all the way, really being flung around. We hit a 'hole' and dropped a couple of hundred feet at one point and were 'airborne' inside the cabin, only being held down my our seatbelts which were being tightened more and more!!!

I smelt sick as I turned onto the localiser at Glasgow and hoped that it had made it into a bag as single crew ops usually extends to cleaning up the mess.............

We landed long and still made the intersection turn off! G/S was about 40kts coming over the numbers!

Fun, I miss it.

PP

[south coast]

try flying in and around the equatorial regions..spent 9 months flying in the congo and there are some pretty large cb's there...wx radar and seat belts a must!

[Droopy]

One night in the late 1980's in a previous life, I was in an a Super Puma just approaching the coast at Aberdeen, doing around 135kt IAS when there was a slightly worried comment from an S61 ahead. The reason was that his normal cruise was 110kt and for a minute or so his groundspeed had ground down to zero.

[Doors to Automatic]

I remember arriving into EDI one extremely windy morning on a DC-9 in Jan 1995. Gusts were so severe we were banking, yawing and climbing/descending all at once on the approach. Took two attempts to get in and all passengers (including myself) very glad to be on the ground in one piece!! God knows what it must have been like in a Saab 340!!

[PAXboy]

This I shall never forget - even though it happend in 1970!!

* Pax on Salisbury (now Harare) to Johannesburg.
* Air Rhodesia Viscount.
* Thunderstorm. A real AFRICAN thunderstorm.
* Ceiling of Viscount (IIRC) FL160, so no where to go but through.
* The sector was about two hours and we were in the storm for about 45 mins. Unfortunately, they had just served breakfast ...
* Meal service suspended and CC told to strap in.
* The bumping and jostling and general throwing about was matched by the throwing up of my fellow pax!

I am always quietly appreciative of modern operating heights, wx rader and the airlines realisation that we prefer to arrive late from having driven around the edge of the storm, than to arrive on time but in a mess!

About two weeks ago, I was in a 747-300 on a domestic sector from the South African coastal town of George (in the Cape) to Joburg.

The storm cloud easily reached up to us at FL350 and it was a good dose of 'driving over cobblestons' and some pax were grumbling. My memories of the 1970 journey ensured that I thought it was a doddle, even though I was sitting inthe very last row and was feeling every bit of the motion.

[ 07 January 2002: Message edited by: PAXboy ]</p>

[Roadtrip]

Over Okinawa preping for a inflight refuel. Pressure lines were REAL close together on the chart. Knew it was gonna be rough. Didn't know it'd be THAT bad. Solid severe turbulence. Couldn't even throw up. About 20 seconds of that convinced me that continuing was a lousy idea.

[747FOCAL]

I wasn't flying but I have been on a check flight in a Mooney after re-engine where we got kicked upside down 3 or 4 times before the pilot asked me if I had enough. Yes I had. Looking at Sky one moment and the ground the next was not fun. A Mooney handles it well though, just let it go and it will fly right out of a "toss over"