Turbulence

All pilots will encounter turbulence. Even on the clearest days, there can be pockets of rough air. You’ll have established perfect straight and level flight, you’ll have your power settings right, your mixture leaned, your plane trimmed out, and here will come some turbulence and start screwing it all up.

The temptation we all have? To react to it. Turbulence pushes us down, so we pull the plane up. It pushes us right so we turn left. The turbulence hits us faster than we can react, and we’re always lagging behind it. Soon, we find ourselves losing control of the flight completely.

See, what we should do is the same thing we should do when we encounter turbulence in our lives: we should just ride it out. The airplane is designed to fly. It will ride out those rough pockets. It’ll be bumpy for a while, but once the turbulence is gone, you’ll be back to smooth, straight, and level flight.

If the turbulence simply won’t relent where you’re at, climb higher. Keep climbing until you’re in smooth air again. And if there’s simply no smooth air to be found? Land. Some days just have lousy weather. There will be another day.

Just ride it out.