I used to be a nervous flier. Not the "slightly uneasy at takeoff" kind — the kind who watched the cabin crew's faces for clues, gripped the armrest through every wobble, and spent whole flights doing math on sounds the plane was making.
I eventually got past it, with help — therapy, honestly, was what worked for me. And a strange thing happens when the fear lifts: you start noticing everyone else. The woman across the aisle with her eyes shut tight. The guy who goes quiet the second the seatbelt sign pings. Turbulence hits and half the cabin is fine while the other half is silently negotiating with the universe.
I know exactly what that feels like from the inside. And I know what would have helped me: knowing what was coming. Fear hates a surprise. The bump that terrifies you is the one you didn't expect; the same bump, forecast in advance — "light chop over the Gulf for about twenty minutes, then smooth" — is just weather. I tried the turbulence sites that were out there. Some are genuinely clever, but in my experience they worked about half the time, and when they did, they spoke in pilot jargon that made things scarier, not calmer.
So I built the thing I wished I'd had: a forecast in plain English, and a way to turn the ride itself into something you're doing rather than something happening to you. Log the bumps. Rate the landing. Walk off with a scorecard instead of a story about how awful it was. It sounds silly, and it is a little silly — that's the point. It's very hard to be terrified of something you're keeping score of.
And if flying fills you with real dread — the kind that shapes your travel plans — please know it's very treatable. It was for me. Fear-of-flying courses and therapists who work with anxiety genuinely change lives. RideScore is a comfort, not a cure; the cure exists too.
A free tool that estimates the bumpiness of any flight from real weather-model data (the same wind and storm forecasts professionals use), shows you pilot reports from planes that just flew near your route, and lets you score your own ride and share it. No account, no tracking, no cost. Your ride history lives on your phone and nowhere else.
If it makes one white-knuckle flier exhale somewhere over the Atlantic, it's done its job.
— the human behind RideScore, made with ❤️ in Amsterdam
Questions, stories, or a scorecard you're proud of:
hello@ridescore.co