Medium Transport; Low Wing; 2 Turbojet Eng
Inflight Event / Encounter Loss Of Aircraft Control; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Weather
Flying to ORD we were full of passengers and were fairly heavy. I did check the radar several times before departure and it was one of those days with thunderstorms building everywhere. Around Texas they were fairly scattered at the time and I was more worried about a huge line of storms between Missouri and Chicago. We were on route and had the radar on watching these scattered storms around Laredo; Texas. We did a slow climb the last 1;000 feet to level off at FL390 which was roughly about 1;000 feet above the clouds. After about 2 minutes of level off and at .74 we were approximately 20 miles between each cell with absolutely nothing on the radar in between and in the clear. Then without warning we hit severe turbulence. The First Officer was the one flying at the time and the autopilot kicked off. For a few seconds I let him fly but since he is fairly new I decided to take the controls. The plane was drastically changing altitude of +[/]-1;000-2;000 feet and airspeed changes of +-50 knots approximately. At this point I told the First Officer (FO) to tell ATC we are going down to FL350 and I just tried to keep the attitude indicator somewhat centered as the whole plane was all over. Within this time of about 1-2 minutes (approximately) we did momentarily get the stick shaker I think twice but each time the airspeed would drastically shoot back up but I still did decide to go max power. Even with the descent to FL350 the turbulence did not get better for a while. As soon as we were out of the severe I had the FO call the FA's and ask how they were and to remain seated for now. At the time they were up and they sat on passengers laps and they all worked to hold the cart and everything down. Luckily no one was injured. I then also talked to both dispatch and maintenance to give them a heads up. I feel like I'm a conservative pilot around thunderstorms and especially as a newer captain. In my almost 10 years with the airlines I have experienced a lot and with the information through our radar I honestly feel like we were far enough from these cells and I have never experienced turbulence even close to this and hopefully never again. After this event I kept replaying everything in my head and thinking about what I could have done differently or better. With the information that we had I feel there's nothing I could have done differently unless it was to return to Mexico. From our radar we chose the most conservative path through these scattered thunderstorms. There were no reports from ATC since this is not a busy airspace on the Mexico border and these storms were building fast. I do wish that if dispatch had tools to give us a huge diversion around these cells that could have been a better outcome. Also; with fast changing technology this event may have been avoided if through a tablet and onboard Wi-Fi we could have looked at ground based radar to get the 'bigger picture' of what was happening.
CRJ-700 Captain reported encountering severe turbulence on a flight from an airport in Mexico to ORD.