This page is about turbulence, something encountered by most passenger flights, and how it's completely safe—even when it sometimes feels otherwise. This article also shares some advice for nervous fliers for managing anxiety about upcoming flights. This information is brought to you by BumpySkies, a free turbulence forecaster, created by a nervous flier.

My flight's got a lot of turbulence forecasted. Am I in danger?

You are perfectly safe. Turbulence during air travel can be uncomfortable and even scary to passengers, but it poses no danger at all to the safety of a flight. Aircraft today are designed to withstand forces much greater than what air turbulence can produce; no commercial airliner in modern history has ever crashed due to turbulence.

Most turbulence bumps the plane around by a distance of inches or less. Your inner ear might quite reasonably express alarm at the sensation of your body unexpectedly shifting around like that, especially when smooth jet travel otherwise carries the illusion that you're sitting perfectly still. However, these shifts have zero effect on the safety or operation of the plane that you're on.

In rare cases, severe turbulence can suddenly shift the plane by several feet. While this still poses no danger to the aircraft, it can injure passengers by tossing unsecured objects and people around the cabin. Pilots do everything they can to avoid encounters with severe turbulence, but sometimes it happens anyway. This is why everyone on board needs to keep those seatbelts fastened and their bags properly stowed, just like the flight attendants never tire of telling you.

On your next flight, you probably will encounter ordinary, "bumpy" turbulence. You probably won't encounter severe turbulence—but if you do, your seat belt will keep you safe. And no matter what, you definitely won't encounter turbulence that endangers the flight, because such a thing simply doesn't exist.

Is flying through clouds dangerous?

Passing through cloud layers during a flight is very common, especially during the initial climb to cruise altitude, or during the descent towards your destination. It's completely safe.

To a plane and its crew, most clouds are essentially just fog in the sky. Being in a cloud dramatically cuts down visibility, but your pilots' instruments keep them continuously informed of the plane's altitude, bearing, and level; there's no chance that a cloud will send the flight in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the air traffic controllers tracking your plane make sure that it always stays a safe distance away from any other aircraft. Even if the pilots can't see much out their windows while inside clouds, those clouds don't hide any navigation or collision hazards—and any risk of icing is mitigated through both pilot knowledge and the aircraft's various anti-icing technologies.

Storm clouds are another matter, and passenger flights generally avoid them. If there's stormy weather in the part of the world you're flying over, then you might still see dark clouds and even lightning during your flight. That storm is probably much further away than it looks, though; the sky is big, and large, far-away storm clouds can look like they're right outside your window when they're actually many miles off to one side.

The crew in a plane and its team on the ground stay continuously aware of both current and forecasted weather along a flight's route. Pilots can steer well clear of any bad weather ahead, and airlines usually prefer delaying or even cancelling flights that don't have a current path around truly stormy weather. The kinds of cloud cover that your plane passes through might sometimes carry turbulence, and during takeoff and landing you might encounter wind and rain, too. But none of it poses any danger to your flight.

If turbulence is so safe, then why do forecasting tools like BumpySkies exist?

I created BumpySkies because I believe that, for many nervous fliers, expecting turbulence—including its intensity and duration—makes actually encountering it less surprising and scary.

Think of it not so much a planning tool as a surprise-management device.

I'm going on a flight soon and I feel scared. Can you help?

It's both common and natural to feel scared or nervous about an upcoming plane trip. BumpySkies was created by a nervous flier, just like you, as a tool that can help you find your own way towards managing your fear.

Here are some other resources that have helped me manage my own fear of flying, and which I frequently recommend:

• A free online course by Captain Stacey Chance can help you gain new perspective on how flight works, and why it's so safe.

• Patrick Smith's book Cockpit Confidential offers a caring pilot's advice to wary passengers.

• Aircraft-tracking sites like FlightAware and Flightradar24 let you see how many commercial flights are zipping around the globe right now, with dozens taking off and landing even while you're reading this, all without incident.

Tools like these can help you realize that during your flight, you'll be part of a temporary but real community with hundreds of thousands of other people all over the world: those who are all up in the air together, on your way to far-away places. Many of them are nervous, too! But none of you are alone.