Can turbulence crash a plane?

Question

Asking out of curiosity and a part of my education - I am having some aerophobia and I wanna demolish it before it takes over me .

Oh and if you're on it , have a wing ever snapped from turbulence or any other cause ? Talking about passenger planes , big ones .

Thanks !

Answer 1

Turbulence is generally harmless. It's the airborne equivalent of driving over a bumpy road in a car.



The airplane can tolerate much more turbulence than the passengers. In severe turbulence, people who are standing inside the airplane can fall and hit their heads or otherwise be injured—just as a person riding in a car going swiftly over a bumpy road can be tossed around if he's not wearing a seat belt.



That's why you are told to keep your seat belt on while seated during the flight. People have been injured and (rarely) worse in flight by turbulence because they weren't wearing seat belts—it's the most common cause of in-flight injury. Usually flight attendants are the ones who end up injured, because their work requires that they stand a lot of the time. The flight itself is never in danger, though.



Keep your seat belt fastened and you'll be fine. You wouldn't ride down the highway at high speed in a car without wearing seat belts (I hope), so you should take the same precaution in an airplane. The airplane itself won't crash, even if turbulence is severe.



As for wings, they are the strongest parts of the plane. The plane is built around the wings, not the other way around. Anything that can snap the wings will have already destroyed most of the rest of the aircraft. In practice, the only thing that can do this is a thunderstorm … which is why aircraft never, ever fly through thunderstorms. Fortunately thunderstorms tend to be localized, so pilots can easily detour around them. And modern weather radar (on the airplane and on the ground) makes thunderstorms easy to spot from a distance, even at night.



Yes, on extremely rare occasions, turbulence has crashed aircraft, especially small aircraft that don't deal with turbulence as well as big jets. Usually thunderstorms were involved. But this is too improbable to worry about, especially today, since modern aircraft and pilots are unlikely to be taken by surprise by thunderstorms, thanks to all the weather gadgets they have now.

Answer 2

During regular flight (at cruising altitude) turbulence alone doesn't cause a plane to crash. If regular turbulence is a factor in a plane crash, then there were other factors involved as well. During turbulence the plane is pushed down, but there is always an equal push back up (you only seem to feel the downward push though). It doesn't just force planes out of the sky or anything, and it's not dangerous to aircraft. As mentioned by others, wake turbulence is a little different, but still not something I would be overly concerned about. There are precautions that are taken to avoid issues with wake turbulence, such as allowing enough time between landings and take-offs for wake turbulence to not be an issue.

Answer 3

1

Answer 4

Turbulance can occur at any altitude and in both clouds or clear air. Inside a thunderstorm the turbulance can get quite severe, to the point of exceeding the design limits of an airplane. Famed test pilot A. Scott Crossfield was killed when his aircraft was torn apart by turbulence in an embedded thunderstorm.



It's less likely in an airliner because they have better means to stay away from strong turbula=ence, they fligh high enough to get around most of the storms, have onboard weather radar, etc... You can still get some nasty non-plane damaging turbulence which can kill unbelted passengers when they get bounced off the ceiling of the plane.



However, there have been a few crashes involving airliners getting severe thunderstorm related severe downdrafts that have thrown aircraft into the ground.

Answer 5

Yes. "Extreme Turbulence" can cause damage to the aircraft and result in a crash. Before you get all scared and decide never to get on another plane because of fear that the wings will snap off, the typical turbulence you experience in an airline is actually several levels below "extreme". What most passengers call "heavy turbulence" is usually only "Light chop" or at most "Light Turbulence". Even if the turbulence was so bad that overhead compartments were opening up and the flight attendants were bouncing off the ceiling, it would have to be a lot worse to actually cause a crash.



In short, yes it is technically possibly but extremely rare. It's also possible that you could be struck by lightening when walking outside or get hit by a car when walking across the street but you probably aren't afraid of those are you?

Answer 6

Short answer: It's possible.

Long answer: It's much more likely to bring down a smaller plane, both because it's affected much more by severe turbulence and the fact that they generally fly much closer to the ground. Which is likely how it brought down the plane of the friend of the first poster. It's highly unlikely to bring down a passenger plane or to snap the wings. They're constructed so that they can bend quite a bit before the strain is too much. For example, check out the wing test of the 787 Dreamliner, and note how far the wings are allowed to flex:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA9Kato1CxA

It would take an immense amount of turbulence to bring down a jumbo jet, and more often than not, turbulence that severe can be forecast and avoided by pilots, by means of a weather report known as a SIGMET.

You're 300 times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. Hell, you're more likely to be struck by lightning. You have nothing to worry about.

Answer 7

technically turbulence has "no direct" affect on the airplane,but in reality it changes lift and in turn directly effects the airplane. Airplane crashes in larger commercial aircraft is usually not ONLY caused by turbulence but by a chain of events. Also if the pilot overreacts they can worsen it, my CFI is a 737 captain and was telling me about how the f/o used full right rudder to correct the turbulence's heading effect and almost caused a (unrecoverable)spin on final,luckily he took over but this is the kind of stupidity that causes these accidents,the reaction,not the cause(also they were near stall speed thanks to a shorter than usual runway,about 700ft to spare). In smaller aircraft the main cause of a direct turbulence crash is wake turbulence which is caused by larger aircrafts wings and wing tips that make spiral columns of air that are opposite so this makes a smaller aircraft go into a spin but usually pilots are advised and at most (with min. FAA suggested seperation) they have a slight wobble from side to side,maybe 5 to 10 degrees max, but most pilots are experienced and usually turbulence in large aircraft is a minor issue unless severe and even at that you'd need a bad crew,which most are good,nothing much though.

Answer 8

turbulence, not really.

windshear and microburst, yes.

wake turbulence, yes.



orographic turbulence, yes. when flying low above the significant mountain , at the leeward (i believe is the english term.. downwind) side, there is significant downwards flow of air. if the aircraft encounters it without height margin, even full power needn't to be enough to climb over that ridge.

Answer 9

i would like to say no, but i'm gonna be honest. my friend just got into a plane crash this year, so i'd say yea. he said that's how it started out and then it crashed. he missed half the school year, had to have a brace on his neck for the rest of it, and had to get nose surgery twice - once this past week. i'm sorry to tell you that, but i'm not getting on a plane for a long time.



edit: turbulence won't crash a plane. it'll just feel like you're crashing. it's air pockets. he wasn't feeling turbulence, he was feeling the plain malfunctioning, but it felt like turbulence. it was a commercial plane. no one died but some people were injured badly. sorry if i scared you, it's just i'm extremely afraid of plains. be assured though, that turbulence will not crash a plane.

Answer 10

its is possible but unlikely as large aircraft fly above the clouds but if they are affected and they plummet to the ground as long as they have wings and maybe some engines it would be possible to either glide to the ground or just recover and carry on the flight

Answer 11

Yes. However it is extremely rare.

Answer 12

no