Seat belt rules, descriptions of the levels of turbulence, and how to react are some of the things we learn in Flight Attendant School.

Sometimes we have time to meet with the Flight Deck to discuss the type of emergency we are in. We talk about our signals from the Captain that may indicate us to have the passengers get into a brace position. We talk about the time we have to get ready for the emergency. We get ready to prepare the Cabin for our emergency. This scenario is called a Planned Emergency Scenario.

Sometimes we will get the bells and we don’t have time to prepare. If possible we get to our jump seats and if we are lucky have a briefing from our seats from the Flight Deck. This is called an Unplanned Emergency Scenario.

Today our flight was a bit bumpy. We had gone through each level of turbulence that we had learned about in Flight Attendant School.

Level One is called Mild Turbulence. We basically make sure that each passenger has their seat belt on, the bell rang once.

Level Two is called Moderate Turbulence. The Flight Deck chimes the Flight Attendants and informs us about the potential for Moderate Turbulence ahead. This means to immediately stow all carts, secure the galley, check the passengers and get secured in our jump seats.

Level Three is called Severe Turbulence. Again, we all hope for the warning from the Flight deck. Severe Turbulence means that all hell is about to break loose.

However if we hit Clear Air Turbulence, there is usually not a warning. The severity can be any level that I have shared; this is the worst scenario possible.

Passengers and Flight Crews have been severely injured from this phenomenon.

We were lucky on this flight. The Captain had warned us about a series of storms ahead. We prepared our Cabin, and secured our Galleys. We checked on our Passengers and secured ourselves into our jump-seats.

The passengers were visibly nervous as we rocked and rolled. We were on a 737 and there wasn’t a partition that separated us from the passengers. We could clearly see their white knuckles.

I tried to break up their fear by announcing that we would soon be demonstrating how to use the little white bags in the seat pouch in front of them. Then we got whacked.

Imagine the Jolly Green Giant trying to kick the door in. That was the sound we heard. Then the cabin went dark.

When the lights came back on all of our passengers starred at us waiting for a reaction. I grabbed the microphone, looked at those pitifully scared faces and guaranteed them that they were not going to see us flinch.

I shared with them that, yes that was lightening that struck us. That everything seems to be fine, except that their hair seemed to be standing straight up, (which of course it wasn’t). Ninety per cent of them raised their hands to their hair to comb it down.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  This was the first I had seen anything like this in my entire Flight Attendant Career.

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