Some words of encouragement when a bumpy flight sends fear down your spine.

IT AMAZES ME THAT SO MANY TRAVELERS FEAR turbulence, even to the extent that they’ll spend days on a train or a bus just to avoid air travel. If that sounds familiar, let me put your mind at ease with this analogy: You’re driving over a smooth road.

Suddenly you come to a stretch of rough pavement. Is your car going to suffer damage? Probably not. Are you in danger? Not especially-it’s just a rough, somewhat uncomfortable ride until you reach the end and find a new stretch of smooth road.

Turbulence has to be extreme and very severe to cause any damage to an airplane. In three decades as a pilot, I have never experienced anything even close. When aircraft were still constructed of wood and not maintained, then yes, turbulence could and did cause structural damage. Today, airplanes are stress-tested to unbelievable limits. When going through factory testing, the wings of modern jets may be flexed so far they can almost touch each other before breaking. Keep in mind that hurricane hunters--aircraft that deliberately fly through hurricanes to gather meteorological data--are stressed no differently than commercial airliners.

Pilots can and do avoid turbulence by keeping their distance from thunderstorm activity whenever possible. Weather reports before and during flights will show areas of turbulence to note or to avoid.

Thermal turbulence is especially predictable on any hot summer day around desert cities  like Phoenix and Las Vegas, where the extreme heat rises and causes bumps. Passengers can avoid it by flying early in the morning or late at night. Pilots can’t avoid it, but to us it’s just an annoyance until we can gain enough altitude to fly out of it. Clear air turbulence is often found near the jet stream and, although not visible per se-hence the name-it can be avoided through PIREPS (Pilot Reports), ATC (Air Traffic Control) advisories and weather reports.

Sometimes passengers have the capability, depending on the airline, to listen to conversations between pilots and controllers, and you may hear the pilots requesting “ride reports” or asking if there are any smooth altitudes. We do this for passenger and crew comfort, but our biggest concern is for our flight attendants-who are out of their seats a great deal of the time-and passengers who either do not heed the seatbelt sign or are not buckled in when the sign is off, but unexpected turbulence is encountered. The real danger isn’t to the airplane, but to people who may get bumped if they’re not buckled up, just like you might on that rough road in your car.

Buckling your seatbelt is a seemingly innocuous precaution, but in many cases, it’s the difference between coming through a rough patch unscathed or bruised (or worse). That’s why you hear frequent announcements to stay buckled up at all times when seated, even when the seatbelt sign is off.

Many people seem to picture pilots wrestling with the controls when it gets bumpy. More than likely, the pilots aren’t even touching the controls. Other than during takeoff and landing, and possibly part of the climb and descent, most flights are on autopilot a great deal of the time. What many passengers perceive as large drops or gains in altitude amount to maybe 10 or 20 feet. Our altitude is “locked on,” and even if the pilots are hand-flying, it’s simple for us to keep the airplane on course and altitude, even when it’s really bumpy.

In fact, the real concern in the cockpit has nothing to do with danger, but with hygiene. Next time it’s bumpy and you feel that familiar anxiety, picture the pilots up front carrying on a normal conversation, wondering if they should even disturb the passengers by saying something. They’re gazing down at their laps and thinking: “Is that coffee actually going to slosh all the way out of the cup and onto my pants? Not again! I just got them back from the cleaners!”

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captain meryl getline (www.fromthecockpit.com) is a B-777 pilot for a major U.S. airline. She also writes a travel column for USAToday.com and is the author of The World at My Feet. Email Captain Meryl at editor@executivetravelmag.com.