Here's one of those travel situations where you wonder, "Is it as bad as it seems?"
A reader from USA TODAY asked their pilot expert: when a plane is experiencing severe turbulence, its difficult to judge how far "down" it appears to be falling or dropping – is it inches or feet?
A common flying altitude is 35,000 feet. USA TODAY's pilot expert says most bumpy flights, you're only going down a few feet. And by a few he says most times it less than 100 feet.
Of course 100 feet is a 10 story building and you're going up and down! He says humans notice the rate of change more than the actual change itself.