Turbulence is interesting: It can be defined as the meteorological manifestation of the randomness in chaotic systems. As a pilot, some turbulence you’ll never see coming until you’re in it. As a passenger, you’re at the mercy of the chaps at the pointy end. Some turbulence is entirely avoidable with small flight path adjustments, and sometimes, pilot judgement is off and bumps are encountered that injure people or even endanger airframe integrity.
Whichever it is, on this site I analyse some specific events, but by and large I provide weekly statistics on air traffic and its potential for turbulence penetrating behaviours. This is done automatically by aggregating air traffic and combining that with high resolution satellite data for the time in question. The flight paths of aircraft are overlayed onto that data, and the temperature excesses (Texc) for each aircraft position in a given 10 minute interval is measured.
This provides interesting insights into which airlines are more likely to penetrate severe convective weather. I don’t think it would be wrong to use that information when you next book your flight. It also gives interesting statistics on what aircraft types are in use, and which airlines are flying what fraction of the traffic.
The data only includes what’s visible from the Himawari 8 satellite, so roughly all weather and flight data between longitudes E 75 and W 145.
This is mainly about providing the data – I won’t interpret much unless there’s blatantly erroneous reporting, for example the Batik flight 6575 on January 2 2018, which claimed CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) was encountered when in fact they were flying through a maturing CB (cumulonimbus – a thunderstorm cloud). This incident in fact prompted me to start this site.
Enjoy the information.
Zee Doktor
Flight Sensei 