Have NEVER had this happen before....drastic loss of altitude!

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

FS9 with weather handled by Active Sky Evolution:

 

I was enroute from KMYR (Myrtle Beach, SC) to CYYZ (Pearson, Toronto) at a cruising altitude of FL330, when just about over KROA, I immediately without warning, (and still on AutoPilot)  was losing altitude at over 4,000 FPM!  

 

At around FL240, I got the 737-700 into level flight, and reengaged the A.P.  Set her for a 1,500 fpm climb, and got back up to my assigned FL330.  Wow...what a rush...this was with ASE injecting the weather.  I had no idea that severe downdrafts were modeled into ASE!  This was a first, and a lot of unsettled air, haze, etc between KMYR and CYYZ today....

 

Immersive?  YOU BET!    :blush:   Now...to ask a flight attendant to come and warm my seat, as I go and change my shorts in the lou.....

 

Here is the departure out of KMYR, with slight haze, but good weather...:

 

 

Here I am, as I am recovering (in climb) to my FP assigned FL330, after my drastic loss of altitude, and control of the aircraft...(resisted to come to level flight!) Also, where it happened, in real-live-time weather injection...

 

 

 

Back to serving coffee, and cleaning up the mess on the cabin floor....whew! More stable air under the wings...:

 

 

 

 

 

Back at FL330, towards CYYZ:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

There is a night approach and landing post to end this flight in the Screen Shots Forum, if anybody wishes to view.  It was a great flight, except for this episode!

 

Ses

[frankielera 5]

Nice set of shots!!.....I'm just glad I wasn't on board. However, I'd love to be in it if you do a flight to Cuba. (where i was born)

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Nice set of shots!!.....I'm just glad I wasn't on board. However, I'd love to be in it if you do a flight to Cuba. (where i was born)

...and you wouldn't want this happening with a expensive drink on the tray before you....(splash!)

 

There was no warning...no movement of the wings or horizon.  I just started dropping.  This would have had to happen to any RL aircraft at that altitude, the time of my flight, and that x/y coordinate, today.  You just won't hear/read about it. I also couldn't level out...as it was like I was falling through an air mass directing down...with no high air pressure field beneath the wings to support the aircraft.  I'm sure that had this been a real flight...I would have felt the air-pressure resistance building under the wing, as a compression into the seat, as I finally got some control through elevator input. Then...we climbed at 1,500 back up to cruise altitude for the duration of the flight,...and safely set down on the numbers on 06L in Toronto. I'm sure that the passengers would have been quite terrified and upset, to say the least!

[frankielera 5]

Bermuda Triangle just got bigger?

[gwillmot 31]

Pitot heat not turned on.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Pitot heat not turned on.

P heat turned on obtaining the runway.

[Appliance 51]

One hell of an airpocket ... more likely a buggy ASE.

[gwillmot 31]

One hell of an airpocket ... more likely a buggy ASE.

Many of us have heard fellow simmers talk about hitting an "air pocket" during a rough flight, especially if the plane dips suddenly and unexpectedlly.  It may seem like the aircraft suddenly flew into a pre-existing pocket of malicious air just waiting to jostle cups of stale coffee and scare nervous passengers.

If people were riding in a car or bus on pavement, the sudden bump would be attributed to a pothole in the road. Except, of course, there are no potholes in the sky; there are no "pockets of air" for the airplane to fly  through.

Despite the phrase's popularity, there really is no such thing as an air pocket it's merely another term for ordinary turbulence.

[John Hinson 22]

The "real" weather is not always realistic, on finals at Beirut once I hit a wind so fast that I found myself flying backwards. Restarted from a saved position and repeated this twice more before I turned the weather off. I bet a few real pilots would like to be able to do that.

 

John.

[pschlute 37]

Didn't realise it was the cat stretched out in front of me on the desk and she had her back leg resting on the keyboard. Bad kitty!!!

 

 

I have the same problem with my dog Rio. He is quite adept at recognising when I am "out of the cockpit", and his usual trick is to press a button on my throttle quad to lower the gear while I am in the cruise. Naughty doggy !

 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I have the same problem with my dog Rio. He is quite adept at recognising when I am "out of the cockpit", and his usual trick is to press a button on my throttle quad to lower the gear while I am in the cruise. Naughty doggy !

Doggy Day Care fixes that!