(Picture from Wikipedia)  The squall line through which we flew had at some point looked worse than this.  It had more red, and orange, and topped out at 48,000 feet.  I do not remember how I know this, but it was in January,  probably in 2006, that we had to fly through a bad squall line in order to land in Houston.

They did a holding pattern, hoping the weather, with 48,000 thunderheads, would dissipate.  It did not, and so, running low on fuel, they announced to us that we were going to have to fly through the squall line to Corpus Christi for refueling, and waiting out the storm a little.  The highest most commercial planes usually cruise is  41,000 feet, and the usual cruising altitude is about 35,000 feet.  There was no flying over this long squall line, and it was very long.

And the pilots took us on a harrowing 1/2 hour to one hour ride through the squall line.  Everybody on the plane was quiet; no chatter at all, as we all held onto our companions.  The stewardesses even showed distress, though I do not remember exactly how.

What we perceived was a wide and gradual tipping from one side to the other, punctuated by seeming weightlessness.  I imagine we could have been close to stalling in the squall, with the weightlessness being associated with dropping.  We landed safely in Corpus Christi, and were allowed to deplane a bit while they refueled.  About an hour later, they had us re-board to complete our trip to Houston.   They said that the rest of the flight would not be as bad.  But the 20 minute flight seemed just as bad.

The stewardesses indicated that it had been a bad flight.  Our pilot, and pilots are usually not very talkative, expressed, as he walked through the Houston gate, that it was one of the scariest flights he had ever been on.  At around fifty years of age,  he thankfully had the experience to get us through this.

Recalling this experience made me realize that something like this could have happened to  AirAsia Flight 8501.   Planes can “fall out of the sky”.