Boeing’s Latest Plan To Decrease The Severity Of Turbulence

Turbulence is a major safety and product problem for airlines all across the globe. Severe turbulence can injure both passengers and crewmembers, all while disrupting services, forcing diversions, and driving higher fuel burn when aircraft have to detour around rough routes. The challenge is that some of the most dangerous bumps in the air come from clear-air turbulence, which is both difficult to detect and hard for pilots to react to quickly. It is effectively invisible to an advancing aircraft, as conventional radar is best at detecting actual particles (mostly water and ice) that cause turbulence, but not the subtle gradients of wind and temperature that can produce CAT.