Turbulence forecast for your flight
Two airports and a departure time. FlyBud reads the global weather models along your route, at your cruise altitude, and tells you where the air turns rough.
Local time at the departure airport.
How the turbulence forecast is calculated
Turbulence has causes you can model. Most of it comes from wind shear — two bodies of air sliding past each other at different speeds, usually at the edges of the jet stream. Some of it comes from air being shoved upward over mountains. Some comes from thunderstorms punching heat and moisture into the cruise levels. All three show up in the same global weather data that every airline's dispatch office plans around.
FlyBud pulls those global forecast grids down as they are published, computes a turbulence index across the whole atmosphere, then samples it along your route — at your altitude, at the hour you will actually be there. A flight is not a point on a map. It is a line drawn through weather that is moving while you fly through it.
Then it does the part that matters: it converts a number into a sentence. Eddy dissipation rate 0.23 means nothing to you. "About twelve minutes of seatbelt-sign bumps, starting an hour after takeoff" means everything.
What light, moderate and severe turbulence actually feel like
The same four-level scale the app uses, and roughly what each one feels like with a cup of coffee on the tray table.
Smooth
The coffee sits still. You might not notice you are moving at all. Most of most flights look like this.
Light
A ripple, the sort that makes the surface of a drink tremble. The seatbelt sign may come on as a precaution. Cabin crew usually keep working.
Moderate
Definite bumps, the ones that make people look up. The drink sloshes, the service pauses, crew sit down. Uncomfortable, still routine — the aircraft is nowhere near its limits.
Severe
Rare, and rare on purpose: flights are planned to avoid it. If a forecast shows severe air on your route, it is very likely the crew will fly around or above it before you ever reach it.
A turbulence forecast for your actual flight, in the app
This page forecasts a route. The app forecasts your flight — the actual aircraft, the actual filed route, the actual departure time, updated as the schedule moves.
Add your flight number and FlyBud tracks it from booking to baggage belt: the forecast refreshes with every new model run, it re-reads it if your departure slips, and it downloads the whole thing before takeoff so it still works at 38,000 feet in airplane mode.
Pilot reports from aircraft that flew the same air an hour ago get folded in too. When a real crew reports bumps the model missed, the forecast is raised to match what was actually felt.
Two forecast models, blended. When they disagree, the app tells you the confidence is lower.
Turbulence forecast questions
How far ahead can you forecast turbulence?
About three days, and the honest answer is that the last day of that is much softer than the first. Global weather models run several times daily and reach roughly 72 to 75 hours out. Beyond that the atmosphere has not been observed yet, so anything claiming a turbulence forecast for a flight next month is showing you climatology — an average — not a forecast. FlyBud says "forecast available in N days" instead, and then actually tells you when it arrives.
Is a turbulence forecast accurate?
For the big features — the jet stream, a mountain wave, a line of storms — forecasts are genuinely good, and they are what airlines plan routes and fuel around. For small patches, they are probabilistic: the model can tell you the air in a region is unstable without knowing which minute your particular aircraft meets it. That is why FlyBud runs two independent models and tells you when they disagree, rather than showing one confident line.
Can you forecast turbulence for a specific flight number?
Yes, in the app. This web tool draws the great-circle line between two airports and estimates a cruise altitude and duration, which is very close for most flights. The app uses the airline's filed route, the real scheduled times and the actual aircraft, and updates when any of those change.
Does turbulence mean my flight is unsafe?
No. Turbulence is a comfort problem, not a structural one. Airliner wings are tested to bend far past anything weather produces, and no large modern airliner has been brought down by turbulence. What turbulence does cause is injuries — almost always to people who were not wearing a seatbelt. That is the whole reason the forecast is worth having: it tells you when to keep it fastened.
Is this tool free?
Yes, and there is no account. It runs the same forecast engine the app runs. The app adds the parts a web page cannot do: your real flight, alerts when it changes, and the forecast in your pocket when you are offline at cruise.
Which routes get the most turbulence?
Routes that cross a strong jet stream at an angle, routes over big mountain ranges, and routes through the tropics in the afternoon. The North Atlantic in winter, anything crossing the Andes or the Himalayas, and equatorial routes during storm season come up most. But the season, the day and the altitude matter more than the route — which is why checking your actual date beats reading a list.
Your actual flight, not just your route.
The app follows the flight number, updates the forecast as the schedule moves, and keeps it in your pocket when you go offline.