The 10 Most Turbulent Flight Paths in the World

Air travel remains the safest form of travel there is (and, according to one recent report by researchers at MIT, is reportedly getting safer). But no matter how safe the journey as a whole might be, there’s often a little turbulence en route to disrupt even the shortest or most uneventful of flights—and new research has uncovered the most turbulent flight paths in the United States and around the world.

Turbulence-tracking website Turbli uses up-to-date meteorological data to forecast and record in-flight turbulence, giving nervous flyers an opportunity to check what to expect before they take off. The site analyzed all its data from 2024 and the most turbulent flights recorded across the year.

1. How Is Air Turbulence Measured?
2. The Most Turbulent Flights in North America
3. The Most Turbulent Flights Around the World

How Is Air Turbulence Measured?

In the U.S. (and in its analysis), according to Turbli, air turbulence is measured using a unit known as eddy dissipation rate, or EDR, which allows the turbulent activity affecting a flight to be plotted on a numerical scale. (Europe, however, uses a different unit of measurement: Derived Equivalent Vertical Gust, or DEVG.) The scale used by Turbli gives light turbulence a score from 0–20, followed by moderate turbulence from 20–40, and then strong (40–60), severe (60–80), and extreme (80–100).

The Most Turbulent Flights in North America

According to Turbli’s data, the roughly hour-and-a-half flight from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Denver, Colorado, is the most turbulent flight in all of North America. Not every flight is going to be quite as turbulent as the others, of course, but the average rate of turbulence for all flights taking the ABQ–DEN route in 2024 was an impressive 17.751.

Denver’s high altitude and proximity to the Rockies meant it made no less than four appearances in the North American Top 10, with the flight from Denver to Jackson coming in second, Denver to Salt Lake City in fourth, and Bozeman to Denver in fifth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Denver came out on top as the most turbulent airport in all of North America, with an average score across all its flights of 17.29.

The Most Turbulent Flights Around the World

Elsewhere around the globe, the most mountainous regions routinely produced the most turbulence worldwide: the Andes-hopping flight from Mendoza in Argentina to the Chilean capital of Santiago ranks as the most turbulent flight in the world with an EDR of 24.684. Santiago and Mendoza were also found to be the world’s most turbulent airports in the study, with EDRs of 23.065 and 22.755, respectively, across all their flights.

The Himalayan cities of Kathmandu and Lhasa, meanwhile, are connected by Asia’s most turbulent flight route (18.817), while the flight from Nice to Geneva, across the Italian Alps, proved the most turbulent in all of Europe (with a score of 16.065).

To see a continent-by-continent breakdown of these rankings, head to the Turbli blog.

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