Jaimes García, pilot: “When we encounter turbulence, we reduce speed from 600 to 400 km/h to protect the aircraft structurally.”

Turbulence during a flight is not synonymous with danger, but it's understandable that passengers feel a certain amount of uncertainty when flying through unstable skies.

Along these lines, pilot Jaimes García has explained on social media how they operate from the cockpit to control turbulence and minimize the impact on the plane.

“First of all, put up the seatbelt signs to protect you. Operationally, what we do is reduce the speed of the plane. At low altitudes, we can be flying at 600 km/h and we reduce the speed to, more or less, 470 km/h. At very high altitudes, in the plane I fly, we fly at 80% of the speed of sound, and we reduce that speed to 76%,” he explains.

"The first goal is to protect the plane structurally, because if we go too fast and there's so much turbulence, the plane can suffer. Additionally, we don't go too slowly because we have to make the plane fly aerodynamically," the pilot points out.

"In some airplanes, the ignition is activated, meaning that since the plane will be moving so much, it's possible that at some point the fuel won't get into the engine. If the turbulence is due to clouds and there are icing conditions, we activate the anti-icing system," the expert concludes.