Keep your seatbelt fastened when you're in your seat. PLEASE.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0831/813120-turbulence-shannon-landing/
A flight was diverted to Shannon airport after encountering clear air turbulence. 12 were injured, including kids. Clear air turbulence is unpredictable and undetectable. It happens when a jet stream runs into a slow or stagnant air mass. It can be very severe. Most planes "surf" a jet stream if one is active. It saves fuel and speeds the flight up.
I used to fly a whole lot more than I do now. I had one incident, back in the early to mid 70s, where we hit clear air turbulence and several passengers came up out of their seats as if being levitated, and banged their heads on the underside of the overhead bins. Since then I never fly with my seatbelt unfastened. I keep it loose so I can move a bit, but not so loose it won't hold me down in my seat. Seeing it just once is all you need.
The flight crews all advise you to keep a seat belt on even when the light is off.
Its good advice.
Really.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I already did that. BTW, where is trumad?
I worked in highway safety for a while including leading a project promoting mandatory safety seat use for kids when few states required it.
My dad's old car with us three kids sitting on orange crates in the back just didn't cut it anymore.
When I worked at NTSB our great (Dem) Chairman, Jim King, loved to tell how people asked him where was the safest place to sit in a plane. The punchllne: "I always sit in the rear because I never heard of a plane BACKING into a mountain." 
As an aside, Jim King was brought in by President Carter first to head OPM, then NTSB. Years later he was recalled from retirement to stage-manage the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Working for him and with him was an honor and a privilege. And a real hoot, if you know about his sense of humor and his cut-up antics. 
Last edited Thu Sep 1, 2016, 03:05 AM - Edit history (1)
I don't know if he's even still alive. God, I hope he is.
When I worked at a Kerry campaign field office in Ohio for a couple of months under the direction of Marty Xiferas, a Massachusetts lawyer who was an old friend of Kerry from the antiwar days, it wasn't until it was all over and we were closing our office and finally returning the rental cars that she asked me for more bio info and I mentioned working for Jim King at NTSB.
That's when Marty told me that Jim King had started as an advance man for JFK. She also told me that every Democratic advance person in the party, at that time, in 2004, had been trained by Jim King.
I'd known and worked for one of the unsung heros of the Democratic Party and didn't even know it until years later.
My fondest memory of King: After NTSB published a highway safety report I'd written King and our other agency top brass went up on the Hill for an agency authorization hearing. A member of the committee, Rep. Oberstar (always a champion of highway safety), complimented King profusely on my report.
Later, it was after business hours and I was still in my office when Jim King flamboyantly waltzed in, draped in the NTSB flag like a superhero cape. He stopped by just to let me know that a congressman had complimented my work and King was very happy about it.
King was serious and very smart and knew our Dem issues inside and out. But I'll never forget his smile when he dressed n the agency flag and came around just to give a lowly underling an attaboy.
