Buckle Up for Bumpier Skies(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Buckle Up for Bumpier Skies
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/09/buckle-up-for-bumpier-skies
46 comments
Agree. The shocking part of the history for me was those few planes in the 60's that were literally torn apart by turbulence. I never knew that. I looked it up, BOAC Flight 911: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911
Also the fact that the turbulence models for design stressors, for planes manufactured today, were from those original measurements in the 60's. Science needs to stay at the forefront here with the earth changing, I only hope that the political situation improves to allow that to remain a priority.
I love flying for the engineering aspect, when I manage to turn off my scared animal-brain. It's absolutely mind blowing the technology and iterative designs these machines have gone through.
Also the fact that the turbulence models for design stressors, for planes manufactured today, were from those original measurements in the 60's. Science needs to stay at the forefront here with the earth changing, I only hope that the political situation improves to allow that to remain a priority.
I love flying for the engineering aspect, when I manage to turn off my scared animal-brain. It's absolutely mind blowing the technology and iterative designs these machines have gone through.
they went past the wreckage of other recently crashed planes during takeoff
even with todays relatively good safety record i refuse to fly unless absolutely necessary, i don’t know how you could be willing to fly back then
even with todays relatively good safety record i refuse to fly unless absolutely necessary, i don’t know how you could be willing to fly back then
somewhere, are videos of TTD testing of wings on passenger aircraft, and other video of the two guys doing final assembly of the wing fasteners on an airbus, nasa has nothing on them.
and even humble cessena trainers, where "nobody has pulled the wings off one yet"
all that, and there are still many many ways for things to go horribly wrong...iceing, mega down drafts, mega UP drafts, that just grab an aircraft and take it on a 5000'+ min elevator ride, or side drafts, put you up, strait up on one wing, ask me how I know.
more, but for sure what we get next is just that, more weather
I never had full 90 degrees up on one wing but I had 40-60 degrees which was enough for me to know I didn't like it.
Winds aloft were 30-40kts and there is a pass in the mountains east of Asheville NC at Chimney Rock we would fly over regularly. On that day I caught what I assume was mountain rotor and it was like being on a mechanical bull.
Winds aloft were 30-40kts and there is a pass in the mountains east of Asheville NC at Chimney Rock we would fly over regularly. On that day I caught what I assume was mountain rotor and it was like being on a mechanical bull.
I have been on a rough flight from Denver to Orange County, CA. Based on that flight, it does not shock me that a plane could be torn apart by turbulence. Instead I'm impressed that so few have been torn apart.
Our technology regularly does ridiculously insane things, and achieves jaw-dropping reliability. So much so, that everyone just expects it to work. And we no longer recognize how amazing it truly is.
Our technology regularly does ridiculously insane things, and achieves jaw-dropping reliability. So much so, that everyone just expects it to work. And we no longer recognize how amazing it truly is.
WSJ's article on fume events might interest you - I understand they're rare but the fact you can't really do anything to protect yourself changed my perspective
https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/air-travel-toxic-fumes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fume_event
The WebGL animation at the top is really cool. It’s probably smaller than a video too, and much sharper
When I saw this comment before loading the article, I thought “this is probably the New Yorker”. I think they produce the best visuals across all the online publications.
Well flabber my gasts. I’ve never seen a video that sharp and well optimised on a mobile page…
Goes to show how good things can look when done right!
Goes to show how good things can look when done right!
What makes you think it's WebGL? It looks like an mp4 to me, at least I was able to download the mp4. It's sharp because it's high resolution.
But maybe they're serving different content depending on the client.
But maybe they're serving different content depending on the client.
You’re right - I confidently asserted an assumption and turned out to be totally wrong.
I had no idea videos on mobile sites could look that sharp and well integrated… I guess I’m used to seeing them done so badly this one stuck out, so I thought it had to be WebGL
I had no idea videos on mobile sites could look that sharp and well integrated… I guess I’m used to seeing them done so badly this one stuck out, so I thought it had to be WebGL
I’m a subscriber with the mobile app and the “video” is a still image for me.
The artist https://www.carlburton.io/
I wonder how they modeled the clouds and the aerodynamics near the tips of the wings.
For the part which talks about turbulence damping, this page illustrates how this looks like on a smaller plane: https://turbulence-solutions.aero/technology/
(Not affiliated, just saw their demo once.)
(Not affiliated, just saw their demo once.)
Airplane travel is becoming incompatible with humans ...
Looks like the singularity is coming just in time.
Looks like the singularity is coming just in time.
> Can today’s planes still keep us safe?
Probably not if the turbines aren't spinning, no.
Probably not if the turbines aren't spinning, no.
Presumably the article is more referring to turbulence at a macro scale. If the air is so turbulent that the compressor blades stall because of it, well, we have bigger problems.
I was referring to the really obvious animation (or lack of) at the top of the page.
But yeah once again it seemed to go over the heads of the oblivious around here...
But yeah once again it seemed to go over the heads of the oblivious around here...
Idk but the analogies in the piece strike as AI generated. I don't think the new yorker is using AI to write pieces, so maybe the author has just been ingesting too much slop
If it weren't the New Yorker, I'd swear up and down that Claude wrote this:
> Turbulence is rarely that simple. It’s too scattered, too mercurial, too easily triggered by weather patterns that trigger other patterns in an endless cascade. “It’s not just one thing that’s going on,” Bob Sharman, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR, told me. “It’s not just atmospheric convection. It’s not just wind flowing over mountains. It’s everything going on all the time and interacting.”
> “It’s not a piece of farm equipment,” Larson said. “It’s a life-support system. At thirty-five thousand feet, you can’t pull over.”
The funny thing is that the passages that feel the most "AI-generated" come in quotes, when the author is quoting others. It could be that the author was communicating with those experts via email, and they used AI to generate their responses.
Otherwise, I think that AI language patters are diffusing into common use. Being so aware of them is a curse...
> Turbulence is rarely that simple. It’s too scattered, too mercurial, too easily triggered by weather patterns that trigger other patterns in an endless cascade. “It’s not just one thing that’s going on,” Bob Sharman, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR, told me. “It’s not just atmospheric convection. It’s not just wind flowing over mountains. It’s everything going on all the time and interacting.”
> “It’s not a piece of farm equipment,” Larson said. “It’s a life-support system. At thirty-five thousand feet, you can’t pull over.”
The funny thing is that the passages that feel the most "AI-generated" come in quotes, when the author is quoting others. It could be that the author was communicating with those experts via email, and they used AI to generate their responses.
Otherwise, I think that AI language patters are diffusing into common use. Being so aware of them is a curse...
You're reversing causality here. LLMs train on massive bodies of human-generated content. Constructs like the ones mentioned are an entirely unremarkable staple of long-form text content produced for audiences who are accustomed to consuming long-form text content.
The formula they have generalized their responses to in basic explainer mode is pretty distinctive for a lot of us who are otherwise used to reading long-form written pieces.
It isn't only LLMs that use rhetorical constructs like these, humans use them too.
Funnily enough "It isn't only X, Y too" doesn't trigger my AI-sense nearly as much as "It's not just X, it's Y". Similarly in the above quote the "It's not just U. It's not just V. It's not just X, it's Y" doesn't seem AI generated to me.
"It isn't only X, Y too" triggers my NPR/NY media/cathedral sense. Because it's folksy affectation but by a trained writer who knows to avoid the weak words like "just."
Not to mention these patterns didn't come out of thin air. The LLMs are statistically regurgitating language from its training set, which researchers probably tuned more towards journalistic sources like the one we're reading.
You're right of course. And it's cliche now, thanks to LLMs, so outlets like the New Yorker who pride themselves on good or interesting writing (which includes avoiding cliches) ought to find alternative rhetorical structuring.
Not arguing, it's just interesting I read the opposite, it felt human to me, and I usually have a good spidey sense here. Maybe it's a combo of handwritten and LLM polishing? Or just a case of a good writer, whose typical output was the training input for most of these models. Good writing, novels and articles and short stories, were the high value training sets.
"For a moment, the plane quivered around them like a greyhound straining on a leash." - I don't think a LLM would write this.
But hell, maybe I'm just being naive. I think we're past the point of ambiguity, we just can't know anymore. Which feels poignant to me.
"For a moment, the plane quivered around them like a greyhound straining on a leash." - I don't think a LLM would write this.
But hell, maybe I'm just being naive. I think we're past the point of ambiguity, we just can't know anymore. Which feels poignant to me.
People point to the basic structure of "It's not X, it's Y" as the hallmark of AI, but I find it's more the incongruity between X and Y, especially when figures of speech (invariably strained) are involved[1]. That first quote reads like a real interaction that's been tightened up for print, but the second, the 'farm equipment' <> 'life-support system', does smell like AI, even though the article implies it's from an in-person conversation.
1. These are all from a single 850-word op-ed I saw the other day: "Presidents do not usually lose power because of a single speech. They lose power when a speech reveals something structural." "But the most important part of the speech was not the applause lines. It was the compression." "Markets can rise. But voters do not live inside charts. They live inside grocery stores and mortgage payments." "The issue is not whether a statistic was stretched. The issue is that the presidency becomes reactive instead of agenda-setting." "That friction is not theoretical — it is baked into the constitutional design." "Trump’s address was not a pivot to persuasion — it was a doubling down on confrontation as strategy." "They are not just another campaign cycle. They are leverage."
1. These are all from a single 850-word op-ed I saw the other day: "Presidents do not usually lose power because of a single speech. They lose power when a speech reveals something structural." "But the most important part of the speech was not the applause lines. It was the compression." "Markets can rise. But voters do not live inside charts. They live inside grocery stores and mortgage payments." "The issue is not whether a statistic was stretched. The issue is that the presidency becomes reactive instead of agenda-setting." "That friction is not theoretical — it is baked into the constitutional design." "Trump’s address was not a pivot to persuasion — it was a doubling down on confrontation as strategy." "They are not just another campaign cycle. They are leverage."
That's not AI speak -- it's just how people create clarity
I noticed that slop-ed in The Hill. Weapons-grade slop. It's impressive in a horrifying short of way.
Have you see AI repeat itself inside a paragraph? This looks more like something an editor missed.
Fourth paragraph, sixth sentence: "Still, at best, only two-thirds of the occupants were buckled up after seventy seconds."
Fourth paragraph, final sentence: "Fully a third of the occupants were still out of their seats after seventy seconds."
Fourth paragraph, sixth sentence: "Still, at best, only two-thirds of the occupants were buckled up after seventy seconds."
Fourth paragraph, final sentence: "Fully a third of the occupants were still out of their seats after seventy seconds."
Yeah if you had AI rewrite things a few times and copy and paste paragraphs from multiple drafts together this is definitely something that could happen.
Not a repeat; an error. How many people were in their seats, unbuckled?
Onion news would put that better:
"The fucking goddamn shit called air that had been working since the first heavier-than-your-ass airplane just stopped working yesterday, american scientists are flabbergasted, and you douchebags must be sure as heck too!"
Would be karma for all the unnecessary flights we have taken as a species.
In particular anyone who does 'mileage runs' and emits huge amounts of CO2 just so they have the 'privilege' to sit in a slightly nicer chair in a dull airport lounge.
In particular anyone who does 'mileage runs' and emits huge amounts of CO2 just so they have the 'privilege' to sit in a slightly nicer chair in a dull airport lounge.
>In particular anyone who does 'mileage runs' and emits huge amounts of CO2 just so they have the 'privilege' to sit in a slightly nicer chair in a dull airport lounge.
I doubt anyone is doing this? At best they're grinding out flights so they can get free first/business class seats later.
I doubt anyone is doing this? At best they're grinding out flights so they can get free first/business class seats later.
Look on the Flyertalk BA forum 2005-2020. Was a huge thing and not always for upgrades, because BA have been stingy with upgrades for a long long time. Lounge access/baggage/priority boarding etc was a huge part of it
Popular mileage runs were London to Honolulu with lots of sectors on the way iirc !!
Popular mileage runs were London to Honolulu with lots of sectors on the way iirc !!
People do this to meet minimum requirements for mileage tiers, e.g. I know someone who was close to Diamond status on Delta and went to Miami and back without leaving the airport area just for the miles.
The article is a good reminder why politics matter and why we can't keep on seeing climate change as some far-off issue that future generations will just bear the brunt of.
> and there was talk of dismantling NCAR altogether. Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, had called the research center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”