And that reminds me of two more turbulence stories I have.
Once on an international flight from Spain to the US, we had a single turbulent drop. They were serving coffee, we were over the ocean and only a couple hours from home, and suddenly in a split second no gravity and then WHAM! A bunch of coffee spilled, they stopped the coffee service, and everyone got quiet for the rest of the ride fearing another drop. Someone breaking the tension would have been sweet relief. There was no other turbulence either before or after, and it's probably a real thing, but because of my YEEHAW experience, I've always had a small suspicion that the pilots did it on purpose. Maybe one of them liked one of the flight attendants or needed a second coffee. :P
We did get a tension breaker on a flight into Maine a couple years ago during hurricane season. The half hour before landing was just awful, we flew right into the hurricane and there was so much turbulence everyone was completely freaked, the plane was bouncing all over the place, and the tension made worse by crying babies. (My fault, half the crying babies on the plane were mine and my cousin's crying babies, btw, I have nothing against crying babies unless I'm on a plane and it's turbulent.)
When the plane touched down and stopped shaking, suddenly it got real quiet, all the babies stopped crying and you could hear a pin drop. Just long enough to be uncomfortably quiet, when one of the flight attendants hit the PA and with all the vocal fry he had announced "...aaaaaaaaaand that's how you do it, folks." The plane exploded in laughter, and a few people actually cried with relief.
Years ago, I was on a flight where it started getting bumpy. Seat belt sign comes on. It starts getting worse. The crew starts preparing for landing. It gets worse.
Captain announces: "Flight attendants sit down now!" That's never a good sign.
It gets worse.
We attempt to land, but apparently we hit very high wind sheer at 1000 feet, and they go full throttle and abort the landing. We wind up bouncing around in a holding pattern in the worst turbulence of my life for about 20 minutes waiting for another chance to land. Eventually, they decide it had gotten enough better to try again. We successfully land although it is very very bumpy.
My dad was flying a DC-3 in the southwest one day, clear sky, no trouble expected. Suddenly, the plane started shaking violently. All he could do was reduce the airspeed to the minimum (to reduce the stress on the airframe) and hold on.
He radioed in to report the turbulence so other traffic could avoid it.
After he landed, the plane was inspected and found that the wings had pulled rivets out.
Trying to land during a thunderstorm in Grand Rapids, Michigan, we had two bumpy go-arounds like that. Then the pilot said something like "well folks I'm sorry but we need top up a bit before giving this another try."
The plane then flew directly across Lake Michigan to Chicago Midway, made a hard left turn in sight of the runway, and about 30 seconds later we were on the ground. Not your normal approach pattern! ATC must have cleared the other planes out for us. Maybe our pilot declared an emergency, I don't know.
We stretched our legs for about half an hour in the terminal while they fueled the plane, then headed back to Grand Rapids. By that time the storm had moved on and we landed in smooth clear air.
Getting to less than 45 minutes fuel on an IFR flight plan (all airliners) is an automatic full on emergency. Usually you request urgency from ATC before that so you can land with just over 45 min (+ whatever is needed for taxiing) of fuel available to avoid having to use emergency procedures and a lot of paperwork.
So probably that's what your pilot did as well. Two go-arounds and then flying to the alternate airport would usually get you very close to the 45 minute final reserve on normal fuel planning.
And that reminds me of two more turbulence stories I have.
Once on an international flight from Spain to the US, we had a single turbulent drop. They were serving coffee, we were over the ocean and only a couple hours from home, and suddenly in a split second no gravity and then WHAM! A bunch of coffee spilled, they stopped the coffee service, and everyone got quiet for the rest of the ride fearing another drop. Someone breaking the tension would have been sweet relief. There was no other turbulence either before or after, and it's probably a real thing, but because of my YEEHAW experience, I've always had a small suspicion that the pilots did it on purpose. Maybe one of them liked one of the flight attendants or needed a second coffee. :P
We did get a tension breaker on a flight into Maine a couple years ago during hurricane season. The half hour before landing was just awful, we flew right into the hurricane and there was so much turbulence everyone was completely freaked, the plane was bouncing all over the place, and the tension made worse by crying babies. (My fault, half the crying babies on the plane were mine and my cousin's crying babies, btw, I have nothing against crying babies unless I'm on a plane and it's turbulent.)
When the plane touched down and stopped shaking, suddenly it got real quiet, all the babies stopped crying and you could hear a pin drop. Just long enough to be uncomfortably quiet, when one of the flight attendants hit the PA and with all the vocal fry he had announced "...aaaaaaaaaand that's how you do it, folks." The plane exploded in laughter, and a few people actually cried with relief.