system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How much turbulence would it take to down plane?
gpt
Aerospace engineer here.  Turbulence isn't much of a threat to an airplane.

Airplanes are designed to withstand gust loads, which assume worst-case scenarios.  Furthermore, pilots are trained not to fight turbulence.  For example, if a strong updraft hits a plane, pilots are supposed to "ride it out" rather than fight to maintain a steady altitude.  (This obviously doesn't hold true at low altitudes, where a crash might happen.)

Also, pilots avoid flying into the most turbulent places, thunderstorms (generally, although there are some instances where they need to fly through them).

So to answer your question, if a plane were flying low near a massive storm, a microburst/downdraft could potentially slam the plane to the ground, but in a more typical scenario, aircraft are designed to withstand loads produced by turbulence and gusts, so the odds of catastrophic failure, like ripping the wings off, is close to zero.