re: Most Turbulent Flight You've Experienced?

First prize: Baton Rouge to Atlanta sometime in the mid 90s. Weather was fine leaving, but there was some godawful weather around Atlanta and the ride started getting really nasty over mid-Alabama or so. Had one of those instances where the plane smacked downward so hard anybody unbelted would have hit the ceiling. A woman with a German-sounding accent next to me was just about to shite her pants. Only time I've ever puked on a plane. As Atlanta came into view you could see these gnaryly-arse black clouds ahead of us with lightning coming out of them. At that point the pilot told everyone, frick this, we're going to land in Columbia, SC instead", where everyone ended up spending the night.

Second prize: on a Martha's Vineyard vacay about 10 yrs ago the last leg was in one of these tiny Cape Air puddle jumpers from Providence, RI to MV. It seated literally 6 or 7 people. When the pilot wanted to seat us a certain way that took into consideration what everyone weighed, my "oh shite" radar went through the roof. The weather wasn't absolutely wretched but it was cloudy and rainy. At one point during the trip I swear the plane went into freefall, nose down, for what had to be 5-6 seconds or so. The pilot (right in front of me) didn't seem to be making any frantic movements or anything with his controls, and that was the ONLY thing that kept me from losing my shite.

We took the god damn ferry back to Providence when the vacation was over, blee dat!