These Are the Bumpiest Routes in the Sky
Main points
- According to Turbli’s findings, eight of the 10 most turbulent North American routes in 2024 feature Denver or Salt Lake City. Turbli is “a turbulence prediction tool for curious or scared flyers.”
- Turbli ranked some 10,000 routes connecting 550 of the world’s largest airports and found that the most volatile route was between Mendoza, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile.
- Singapore Airlines and Southwest Airlines recently implemented flight attendant service changes in response to airflow changes.
If you don’t like turbulence, you may want to avoid flying near the Rockies.
According to Turbli’s findings, eight of the 10 most turbulent North American routes in 2024 feature Denver or Salt Lake City. Turbli is “a turbulence prediction tool for curious or scared flyers.”
Turbli said it assessed turbulence “on available flight trajectories recorded over a year” and found that the most turbulent of about 10,000 routes worldwide was the route between Mendoza, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. It records the average “Eddy current dissipation rate,” or edr, for a 122-mile route is 24.684, which means “moderate” turbulence. Six of the 10 most turbulent routes in the world in 2024 involve Mendoza or Santiago.
In North America, the most volatile route last year was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Denver, with an average EDR of 17.751 over the nearly 350-mile flight. Four of the five most volatile routes in North America involve the Mile High City.
Some airlines have recently made some changes to their practices in response to turbulence-related problems in the sky or the possibility of these problems occurring.
In May last year, a Singapore Airlines flight from London to the Southeast Asian city-state encountered severe turbulence and had to make an emergency landing in Bangkok, Thailand. One passenger reportedly died, more than 100 people required medical attention, and the airline subsequently chose to stop meal service when the seat belt lights came on.
and Southwest Airlines (low uv) last month changed the cabin service termination altitude from 10,000 feet to 18,000 feet. “Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees,” a spokesperson said.
Singapore Airlines did not immediately respond investment encyclopedia Request for comment.