New Experiances

[bellevueace]

Having recently done four flights in two weeks with a trip to the USA i was wondering if someone could explain a couple of experiances ive not had before. Firstly on a flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco with Southwest on approaching SF the aircraft approached in what appeared a rather erratic way. Suddenly the nose would dip sharply then the aircraft would level out, a couple of minutes later the nose dipped sharply again before levelling out, this happened several times as if coming down in giant steps before coming in for a smooth landing, there were quite a few aircraft in line at the time. The other sensation was leaving Las Vegas to return home on a Thomas Cook Airbus A330, After taking off and getting to about 4,000 ft there was a feeling as if the aircraft was actually falling out of the sky, it just seemed to drop causing a feeling in the stomach like driving over a humped back bridge at speed. This only lasted a couple of seconds but is a sensation ive never experianced before, i was just wondering what this could have been.

[CAflyer]

I think in both cases they were making room for traffic. The step thing is common and I have been in planes that have done that. For the 330 I think they might have had to slow down at 4000 because of another plane or something and then they picked back up. I could be wrong but this is the way I have seen it explained before.

[Dachiri]

I have done the step-down descent a few times. It seemed the times that I experienced this, we hit turb upon descending and the stepping down minimized it. But I agree with Barb that that approach could also be used to keep all the traffic orderly.

I have also been in a few planes that felt like they were falling after the climb out. I think they just leveled off really fast. Again, this could be a traffic thing, or a weather thing. If you're going up really fast and then level off and slow down rapidly, it's going to feel like the plane is pointing down, when really it's just gone back to level.

[bellevueace]

Yeah that all sounds feasable, thanks guys.