Narrative:

In a climb to our filed altitude we were handed off to washington center and caught the tail end of a conversation between another aircraft and a controller talking about a report of severe turbulence below 30;000 [feet]. The first officer and I had elected to climb to the highest altitude listed in our performance section of our take off landing report which was 35;000 at first the ride seemed smooth with very occasional light chop. As we flew along the ride got progressively worse and became light to moderate chop. The first officer and I had a conversation about getting lower and the first officer inquired to ATC about getting lower to get a better ride and ATC replied that as we went lower the rides got worse and ATC assured us that we were just in a rough spot and it would soon smooth out based on previous reports he had gotten. The ride continued to be light to moderate chop. At this point I made a PA announcement 'flight attendant please be seated' and confirm the seat belt light was on. The first officer and I both put on our shoulder harnesses and I slowed the aircraft down below 250KTS to try to lessen the bumps. At 35;000 feet about 5 minutes after I made the announcement to be seated we encountered an area of severe turbulence the autopilot turned off and we were presented with messages of autopilot failure and sps (stall protection system) speed fail. I had my hands on the controls and throttles in anticipation of the autopilot kicking off so I was ready when it did but the turbulence was so severe we quickly lost control of the aircraft the aircraft quickly went in to the red ark of our speed tape exceeding mach .80 and seeing the trend approaching red line I opened the speed brakes to try to reduce the speed and over stressing the aircraft but this did not help the aircraft continued into the red section of our speed tape and then aircraft went into an uncontrolled dive to which I recovered smoothly trying again not to over stress the aircraft when I was able to recover the aircraft we were at 33;000 [feet] approximately. The first officer transmitted our severe turbulence encounter with ATC while I checked on the flight attendant and passengers. The flight attendant was seated and belted in her jump seat as I had previously instructed and she nor were any passengers injured. ATC immediately started to vector area traffic around our encounter and were given a descent. I notified dispatch of our encounter and let them know we did not suffer any injuries and to have maintenance standing by as I was going to be writing up the aircraft effectively grounding till the necessary inspections were completed and signed off. We proceeded and landed without further incident. In closing I'm thankful to my crew to whom I believe were to reason to the positive outcome and no insures to the crew or passengers. This was by far the worst turbulence I have encountered and hope it never happens again.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ERJ-145 flight crew reported encountering severe turbulence; and momentary loss of control.

Narrative: In a climb to our filed altitude we were handed off to Washington Center and caught the tail end of a conversation between another aircraft and a controller talking about a report of severe turbulence below 30;000 [feet]. The First Officer and I had elected to climb to the highest altitude listed in our performance section of our take off landing report which was 35;000 at first the ride seemed smooth with very occasional light chop. As we flew along the ride got progressively worse and became light to moderate chop. The First Officer and I had a conversation about getting lower and the First Officer inquired to ATC about getting lower to get a better ride and ATC replied that as we went lower the rides got worse and ATC assured us that we were just in a rough spot and it would soon smooth out based on previous reports he had gotten. The ride continued to be light to moderate chop. At this point I made a PA announcement 'Flight attendant please be seated' and confirm the seat belt light was on. The First Officer and I both put on our shoulder harnesses and I slowed the aircraft down below 250KTS to try to lessen the bumps. At 35;000 feet about 5 minutes after I made the announcement to be seated we encountered an area of severe turbulence the autopilot turned off and we were presented with messages of autopilot failure and sps (Stall Protection System) speed fail. I had my hands on the controls and throttles in anticipation of the autopilot kicking off so I was ready when it did but the turbulence was so severe we quickly lost control of the aircraft the aircraft quickly went in to the red ark of our speed tape exceeding Mach .80 and seeing the trend approaching red line I opened the speed brakes to try to reduce the speed and over stressing the aircraft but this did not help the aircraft continued into the red section of our speed tape and then aircraft went into an uncontrolled dive to which I recovered smoothly trying again not to over stress the aircraft when I was able to recover the aircraft we were at 33;000 [feet] approximately. The First Officer transmitted our severe turbulence encounter with ATC while I checked on the Flight Attendant and passengers. The Flight Attendant was seated and belted in her jump seat as I had previously instructed and she nor were any passengers injured. ATC immediately started to vector area traffic around our encounter and were given a descent. I notified Dispatch of our encounter and let them know we did not suffer any injuries and to have Maintenance standing by as I was going to be writing up the aircraft effectively grounding till the necessary inspections were completed and signed off. We proceeded and landed without further incident. In closing I'm thankful to my crew to whom I believe were to reason to the positive outcome and no insures to the crew or passengers. This was by far the worst turbulence I have encountered and hope it never happens again.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.