Wake Turbulence

Over the past weekend, Teri, Ivy and I took a flight down to L.A. for my grandfather's funeral. Turns out, it was the most eventful flight that I've ever been on. I'm already deathly afraid of flying and that flight made it even worse. So here's what happened. The flight itself was uneventful. Very smooth takeoff with very minor turbulence, if any. Then 3/4 of the way into the flight, the entire plane dipped to the right about 45 degrees and lost elevation. The whole plane was yelling. My knuckles are white gripping the arm rests and my heart is racing. Within a few seconds the plane levels off and we're fine. At this point I think OK that was scary as hell but we're OK now. Then the plane does it again, this time tipping the the left 45 degrees and losing elevation again. This time I'm thinking we're dead for sure. Something is seriously wrong and everyone in the plane is yelling even louder. All I could think of was that this plane will kill 3 family members. Just like the first time, the plane levels off again.

A few minutes later, the pilot comes on the intercom and says everything is fine. Here's what happened. There was a 747 plane 10 miles directly in front of us. At the speed that we're going, 10 miles is a very short distance. Just like boats have wakes as they glide through water, planes have wakes as well. Only the wake of a plane creates a mini tornado. We just happended to fly right into the wake of the 747. It basically brushed our 737 plane off to the side like a fly. Apparently, the plane was flying under auto pilot. After the first dip, the pilot took the plane off auto pilot and probably tried to readjust the plane causing the 2nd dip. The pilot also said that this was a very rare occurance. Most people probably won't ever experiece it in there lifetime. My question then is how the hell did we ever get that close to another plane??? What happended to the radar? Did someone fall asleep in the flight tower? To make matters worse, LAX was busy as usual, so we missed our landing. We had to circle around for another 20 minutes before finally landing.

The only good thing about this experience is that it has reinforced what I already know that planes are very sturdy. It will take a hell of a lot more to bring a plane down from mid air.

But it doesn't stop me from feeling like this when stepping on a plane:


Or thinking of this: