Wing loading and turbulence

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Alfredson007
Technical Sergeant
Posts: 540
Joined: 16 Feb 2011, 07:42
Location: Finland

Wing loading and turbulence

Post by Alfredson007 »

Hello.

If we have one weather but multiple airplanes, would wing-loading be the most important figure to look at how much these planes suffer from turbulence/gusts etc? Sure there are other factors too but if we'd have to mention only one.

I am asking this because today i was as a passenger in a Douglas DC3, the weather was clear, some wind and gusts, around 10 knots surface winds. I was rather surpriced how much the plane rocked in the air, nothing crazy but i'd say it would have felt ~exactly the same as in little Cessna in that weather, pretty sure. Last time i was in DC3 it was very smooth. Now the walking on the aisle was pretty annoying (and fun:D).

I remember reading that wingloading is one factor how plane behaves in air, and it seems that your ordinary Cessna's loading is (going metric here) something like 50-70kg/m2 where as DC3 has 125kg (and i think DC3 is lighter than MTOW most times for local lights). Modern passenger jets seems to have something like 400-600kg/m2. The lesser the kg/m2 the more rocky it should feel, i've understood.

Anyway, i was amazed how the much heavier DC3 felt like a Cessna in the air while the weather wasn't that bad. I mean surely 747 can go crazy too but i think it requires "a tad" more turbulence etc.

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