The 10 Most Turbulent Airline Routes in the U.S.

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If you fly with any sort of regularity, chances are you’ve flown through some turbulence. Typically, the pilot will come on the PA system and announce they’re about to experience some turbulence. This will be followed by being told not to leave your seats (yeah, don’t be like this guy), the seatbelt sign going on, and possibly the flight attendants being told to go to their seats, as well. And then you start feeling varying degrees of turbulence in the form of shaking, rocking, occasionally a very brief “freefall” feeling, etc.

Understanding Levels of Turbulence

There are all different levels of turbulence and, not surprisingly, each level has a name. Different locations have different amounts of turbulence at different times, although some places are well known for their high levels of turbulence. In fact, there are some places planes won’t fly over, and one of the reasons is because there’s so much turbulence.

Fortunately, there aren’t such places in the U.S. Which isn’t to say we don’t have turbulence up there over our country; we do. And there’s a website that has even figured out which airline routes are the most turbulent.

Turbli describes itself as a turbulence forecast tool. Introduced in 2020, they collect and analyze data, obtained by NOAA/NWS and the Met Office (the latter is the UK’s national weather service), on worldwide turbulence, which they make available to travelers and pilots alike.

For regular flyers like us, Turbli has an interactive turbulence map, where you can get a current picture of the world’s turbulence at altitudes from about 14,000 feet to about 37,000 feet (you have to toggle between meters and feet). The map is updated every 6 hours and can show forecasts for 3, 6, 9 and 12 hours into the future.

Anyway, Turbli takes an annual look at the data from about 10,000 routes that planes take, worldwide – ones that connect about 500 airports – and ranks them based on their level of turbulence.

To give you an idea of what that “average turbulence” is, figure:

• 0-20 is light
• 20-40 is moderate
• 40-60 is strong
• 60-80 is severe
• Anything above 80 is extreme

Here’s what each of those measurements mean.

The Most Turbulent Routes in the U.S.

Anyway, here are the 10 most turbulent routes in the United States:

Global Turbulence Rankings

Oh, and if you’re curious, here are the most turbulent routes in the world:

Happily, none of the U.S. routes made it in the worldwide top ten.

Turbli broke down several other routes, including:

• Routes by continents (North America [as seen above], South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa)
• Routes by distance (short- medium- and long-range routes)

You can see all of their data on this page of Turbli’s website.

Feature Photo Bernal Saborio / flickr / CC BY SA 2.0

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