3 ms·

What about turbulence? I've been in some doozies where it felt like the pilot was fighting it hard, constant up and down and left and right corrections. I won

by axaxs 6y ago

What about turbulence? I've been in some doozies where it felt like the pilot was fighting it hard, constant up and down and left and right corrections. I wonder what effect that fast change in altitude has, if any? Just G Force?

ncmncm 6y ago
Pilots do not fight turbulence, hard or lightly. The plane goes where it is pushed, and you go with it. A very long (thus widespread) updraft might cause the pilot to reduce power, but that is very rare.
- axaxs 6y ago
  I'm not refuting you, but now I'm genuinely curious. We all know or think of turbulence like hitting bumps in the road, shaking, etc.. I was on a shorthaul, some embraer or similar sized plane, and experienced this only once. We kept hitting those big 'bumps', then I'd feel the plane dive down or up quickly. The kind that gives you the feeling in your stomach, like going over a hill as a kid in a car. In my head to this day I assumed the pilot was quickly trying to find an elevation to avoid the turbulence, but your comment implies that's incorrect. So those quick pitches are also a form of turbulence? It was stomach turning, and honestly made me a bit uneasy.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    What you call turbulence is really just a mass of air moving at a different speed or in a different direction, and the plane moved out of one into the next. So, e.g., the plane passes into a downdraft near a cloud, and then into an updraft under the cloud, then into another downdraft, and then out. You feel four lurches. The pilot might be looking for a path that stays away from those, but you won't feel anything the pilot does.
blunte 6y ago
Turbulence that would push an aircraft up or down will have the same effect on either design. However, turbulence that would typically cause a plane to roll quickly (such as hitting some sort of vortex or wake from another plane) should have less effect on a plane with a more widely distributed mass. On the other hand, once you start the big V plane rotating, it will be harder to stop rotating (take longer, unless the rotation energy is so great that the comparatively short wings simply cannot compensate). We are at the point of fly-by-wire where there is usually a computer between the human and the control surfaces. This enables truly unstable aircraft (like the awesome F117 stealth fighter) to fly when they are inherently unstable designs. But as evidenced by the 737 Max debacle and the long ago A320 (320?) issue, sometimes the computer makes an unfortunately poor decision and does a bad thing. Point is, we are already there, so we might as well allow the computer to make a V fly wonderfully and save a lot of fuel and cabin noise.

by axaxs 6y ago

ncmncm 6y ago

Pilots do not fight turbulence, hard or lightly. The plane goes where it is pushed, and you go with it. A very long (thus widespread) updraft might cause the pilot to reduce power, but that is very rare.

axaxs 6y ago
I'm not refuting you, but now I'm genuinely curious. We all know or think of turbulence like hitting bumps in the road, shaking, etc.. I was on a shorthaul, some embraer or similar sized plane, and experienced this only once. We kept hitting those big 'bumps', then I'd feel the plane dive down or up quickly. The kind that gives you the feeling in your stomach, like going over a hill as a kid in a car. In my head to this day I assumed the pilot was quickly trying to find an elevation to avoid the turbulence, but your comment implies that's incorrect. So those quick pitches are also a form of turbulence? It was stomach turning, and honestly made me a bit uneasy.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  What you call turbulence is really just a mass of air moving at a different speed or in a different direction, and the plane moved out of one into the next. So, e.g., the plane passes into a downdraft near a cloud, and then into an updraft under the cloud, then into another downdraft, and then out. You feel four lurches. The pilot might be looking for a path that stays away from those, but you won't feel anything the pilot does.

blunte 6y ago

Turbulence that would push an aircraft up or down will have the same effect on either design. However, turbulence that would typically cause a plane to roll quickly (such as hitting some sort of vortex or wake from another plane) should have less effect on a plane with a more widely distributed mass. On the other hand, once you start the big V plane rotating, it will be harder to stop rotating (take longer, unless the rotation energy is so great that the comparatively short wings simply cannot compensate). We are at the point of fly-by-wire where there is usually a computer between the human and the control surfaces. This enables truly unstable aircraft (like the awesome F117 stealth fighter) to fly when they are inherently unstable designs. But as evidenced by the 737 Max debacle and the long ago A320 (320?) issue, sometimes the computer makes an unfortunately poor decision and does a bad thing. Point is, we are already there, so we might as well allow the computer to make a V fly wonderfully and save a lot of fuel and cabin noise.