Regardless of whether you’re a nervous flier or not, turbulence can be an unnerving experience mid-flight. One minute you are cruising along smoothly, and the next you’re seeing the seatbelt sign illuminate and things start to get a little bumpy.
And while turbulence is largely nothing to worry about, there are some flight routes on which travelers experience more of it than others. But before we get into that, it helps to understand exactly what turbulence is and why it happens.
What is turbulence and is it safe?
“Turbulence is the chaotic movement of air created by the shearing of winds or forced airflow up over mountains,” Isabel Smith, a member of the University of Reading’s Meteorology Department, previously told Condé Nast Traveller UK. “The atmosphere is a large fluid, with waves of airflow propagating around the world. As the air becomes unstable, it breaks into fast-moving chaotic swirls. An aircraft encountering turbulence is shaken as it encounters fast-flowing, swirling airflow.”
While severe turbulence can be dangerous, it’s incredibly rare, Smith says, with less than 1% of the atmosphere containing severe turbulence.
“You are much more likely to encounter light turbulence, which will shake you around and possibly spill over a few drinks but is not dangerous,” says Smith. “The issue with some types of turbulence, like clear air turbulence, is it can come out of nowhere, so you be thrown while walking around the plane. This is why the best advice is to keep your seat belt on as much as possible.”
The world’s most turbulent flight routes in 2023
An analysis of around 150,000 flight routes by turbulence forecasting website Turbli has revealed the most turbulent flight routes of 2023. Routes have been ranked according to the “eddy dissipation rate” which measures how intense a bout of turbulence is at a given spot.
The world’s most turbulent flight route in 2023 was between Santiago and Santa Cruz, a 1,200-mile journey between Chile and Bolivia. Next was a 130-mile route connecting the Kazakh city of Almaty with Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Two of the top 10 routes were in Europe, while six of the top 10 were domestic routes in Japan and China.
All of the top 10 routes were short-haul flights, although data revealed the 3,200-mile journey between Tokyo to Kathmandhu to be the world’s most turbulent long-haul route.
The 10 most turbulent flight routes, ranked
1. Santiago (SCL) – Santa Cruz (VVI)
2. Almaty (ALA) – Bishkek (FRU)
3. Lanzhou (LHW) – Chengdu (CTU)
4. Centrair (NGO) – Sendai (SDJ)
5. Milan (MXP) – Geneva (GVA)
6. Lanzhou (LHW) – Xianyang (XIY)
7. Osaka (KIX) – Sendai (SDJ)
8. Xianyang (XIY) – Chengdu (CTU)
9. Xianyang (XIY) – Chongqing (CKG)
10. Milan (MXP) – Zurich (ZRH)
A version of this article originally appeared in Condé Nast Traveller Middle East.
