"Morgans" wrote in message
...



You should have seen it Thursday afternoon. Several reports of severe
turbulence between 28,000 and 31,000 just north of Atlanta. It
sucked!!!

Chip, ZTL

A little mountain wave action? Rotors?
--

I doubt it. We did have severe Saturday reported by a Navajo at 11,000 near
Mount Mitchell NC which was undoubtedly mountain wave. However, the area in
question Thursday was in the triangle described by Atlanta GA, Knoxville TN
and Chattanooga TN and at high altitude.

There was a wicked jet-stream blowing. The aircraft reporting the severe
were all business-class aircraft (C550, C560 and a LR45) climbing NW-bound
out of the Atlanta terminal area. The aircraft enroute through this same
area/altitude band heading the opposite direction were calling it
"continuous light chop, pockets of moderate..." Of course, for the next
couple of hours once people heard about the severe reports, everyone bailed
out of the FL280-310 stratum.

One of the hardest parts about the enroute ATC business is delivering
turbulence reports to aircraft operating in the flight-levels. Frankly,
there is absolutely no "chop" which is operationally significant to ATC. We
could care less. We care about the buzz-word "turbulence", not "chop." If
we're getting reports of "continuous light turbulence", we take notice.
"Moderate" or greater turbulence, and we take action. "Severe" and we put
the word out far and wide and move airplanes far away to miss it.

Winter days when the rides suck are bad days in ATC land because the
workload goes through the roof. Many professional aircrews spend the entire
flight looking for smooth air and the bug the crap out of ATC with reports
of "occasional light chop" or "how's the ride ahead?" Some companies are
much worse than others. In our neck of the woods, Delta Airlines is the
absolute worst (but not the only offender). They have a corporate culture
that encourages their crews to ask early and ask often about the ride ahead,
even on the smooth days. It has something to do with an FA winning a
lawsuit against the company for an injury. Delta seems to figure if they
constantly ask about the ride ahead, then they shed some liability or
something. It also doesn't hurt in the customer service department.
However, it really sucks to have every Delta check in with "Delta So and So,
blah blah blah, how's the ride ahead?" Now, not only does ATC have issue a
control instruction, they also have to waste air time giving a dissertation
on rides ahead that may or may not be accurate. This, even on smooth days.
Universally, we call smooth air "Delta chop".

One of the funniest things I have ever heard on the radio happened last week
when the rides were crap everywhere. This AirTran B717 had climbed up to
FL330 figuring that if he couldn't get a smooth ride, at least he could get
a good fuel burn on the way to Akron. A Delta MD88 was about 20 miles in
trail at FL290. The Delta crew was wearing me out, bitching about "light
chop" at three different altitudes they had leveled at. Delta heard me call
some traffic to the AirTran, and asked me to "Ask Citrus how his ride is up
there at Thirty Three please". The Airtran pilot keyed his mic, and you
could hear by the sound of his voice that he is getting jolted pretty good.
"Atlanta [jolt] tell Delta [groan] that [bounce] it's nice and [thud] smooth
up here at [ouch] 330. Barely a ripple. [BANG!] Send him
[bounce-thud-shudder] on up- he'll love it!" Delta didn't say another word
about light chop.



Chip, ZTL