United Flight 1427 hits severe turbulence, 2 injured, out of Denver

United Flight 1427 hit severe turbulence out of DEN and turned around to land.

CBS4Denver has the details. Please buckle up at all times, especially in the mountain areas.

And here is the Pilot Report of Turbulence from that flight, it must have been quite a ride. According to the report, the aircraft’s altitude varied by 1800 feet in the course of a minute.

DEN UA /OV ALS030060/TM 0625/FL370/TP A320/TB SEVERE TURB/ SEVERE MTN WAVE/RM ± 1800 FPM

United Airlines

Thank you to Chris Sloan from the Airchive for sending this in.

Written by tb_neg on April 16th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Incidents and Turbulence and United Airlines.

Related articles

5 comments

Comments are now disabled for this article, thank you for your participation. Read the comments left by other users below, or:

Jon
#1. April 16th, 2008, at 8:05 PM.

I am impressed that occurred at that altitude…

I am not sure that it was a 1800FT variation, doesn’t FPM mean feet per minute in this context?

tb_neg
#2. April 16th, 2008, at 10:03 PM.

It varied 1800ft in a minute, so no, not all at once. If you look at the flight aware track log though, you can see it bouncing around if you click more details. A nasty ride in any case.

You’ll see mountain wave activity pretty high up over there, regardless.

carl
#3. May 18th, 2008, at 9:10 PM.

Hello,
Thanks for the great site…I’ve used it regularly in the past few years. I am curious that a commercial jet can drop that much. I thought a plane couldn’t really drop more than 10 or 20 feet at a time, even in the worst turbulence? I think its possible to drop more than that flying in the middle of thunderstorms, though commercial jets dont do that.
Thank You.

tb_neg
#4. May 18th, 2008, at 11:06 PM.

Carl

I just don’t know, I suppose in theory it could. Perhaps someone else could chime in. 1,800 divided by 60 is 30 feet per second. Seems like a lot, indeed.

Jeff
#5. May 20th, 2008, at 2:05 PM.

I was on that flight. I found you by Googling around looking for reports. After the initial couple jolts the plane nosed down at a pretty steep angle and turned at the same time. That could account for quite a bit of the 1,800 ft? Based on the noise, I suspect many passengers thought we were going to crash. I thought the pilot was trying to get out of the area as fast as he could. I have never felt such strong jolts on a plane and hope never to feel them again!