I had a flight like that just last year. It was VERY scary. We were flying from Des Moines to St Louis in route to Raleigh, NC. It was STORMING for the last 45 minutes of the flight to St Louis and we had some of the worst turbulence that the pilot (of 20 years commercially) had EVER experienced. People were screaming and crying on the plane. The only thing to make it worse would have been if the oxygen masks would have popped down (I know, loss of cabin pressure). It was BAD. Then, when we were landing, we were waving side to side like that. The pilot put it down HARD, and we slid off of the side of the runway a little before he got it under control and we were at the terminal.
Needless to say I was feeling sick and nervous about the next leg of my trip. I don't fly very often, so it was nerve racking to begin with. Every small bit of turbulence from then on has made me nervous, and I have had about 7 flights since then if you count each part of a 1-stop round trip flight.
It is scary even for people that fly all of the time. I witnessed the look of panic in the flight attendants eyes when the cockpit keep "dinging" her to the phone. She didn't answer it right away the first time, so they "dinged" her again. She answered it, looked freaked out. Threw down her Flight Attendant Seat and buckled herself in TIGHT. Seasoned flyers stayed calm at first, still reading the newspaper or a book, but it wasn't long before they had everything away and were gripping on to the arm rests.
I am just glad that we had the pilot with 20 years of experience and not a true rookie.
