The bad and ugly. When I was 24, I was on a flight from Chicago to St. Louis in the spring, and a tornado formed in the vicinity mid-flight. The plane started tossing, and the only thing we heard from the cockpit for the next two hours was a loud and immediate, “FLIGHT CREW IN YOUR SEATS. NOW!” The turbulence became so bad, some of the overhead bins opened, and people started screaming when things started flying around. There was nothing the flight attendants could do from their seats to restore order other than to try unsuccessfully to calm everyone. As we found out later, the reason we were in the air so long was ATC was trying to divert all the planes in the area to other airports/altitudes, but there was no smooth air to be found and only so many options for landing. Eventually, our flight was routed back to its original destination, but the pilots never came on again to give us any information. In was sheer panic and chaos. I had never seen so many crying adults.
I became aware of my mortality on that flight. I took the train back to Chicago and didn’t fly again for a long time and then not without a tranquilizer. To this day, I hate flying, thus my response to @sherpa’s kind gesture on the Tell Me Somethin’ Good thread.