Still going through old photos.

This one was taken during a short flight on a Jumbo Jet from Air China on my way home to Shanghai from Beijing.

This particular flight was one of the bumpiest one I ever had the pleasure to endure and it happened so sudenly that the content of the drink I was holding simply flew up in the air. It took approximately 30′ before the turbulences stopped as abruptly as they had started.

This reminds me of a conversation between pilots at a time when radio conversations were broadcasted and you could hear them on your headphones aboard a flight. Anyway on a United flight from Chicago to Charlotte and a pretty bumpy one, pilots were talking to each other from one plane to another. One of them declared “at twenty seven, the floor is hard” which obviously meant “at 27.000 feet, no turbulence”. I never forgot that.

By the way, the humpty-bump is an aerobatic manoeuvre based on a loop combined with quarter or half rolls. There are several variations, either with exit in the same direction as the entry, or in the opposite direction. The climax is usually positive (nose up) but can also be negative (nose down).

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