Flight 392 · Boeing 727-222A
Boeing 727-222A · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96IA145
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-222A
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7443U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CATo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Disturbance
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airline flight was at Flight Level 240 when the ARTCC advised the captain of possible moderate chop starting at Flight Level 220. The captain advised the flight attendants of this information. A few minutes later the flight was instructed to descend to Flight Level 190. The captain turned on the seat belt sign and requested that the passengers take their seats. During the descent the flight encountered turbulence as it entered a cloud layer at Flight Level 220. As the flight entered the cloud layer a flight attendant was dealing with a passenger who had gotten out of their seat. The flight attendant fell against the passenger seat arm and onto the floor during the turbulence encounter.
Probable cause
a passenger disturbance that required the flight attendant to leave her seat. A factor in this accident was the encounter with turbulence as the flight attendant was performing her assigned duties.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96IA145
- Event ID
- 20001208X05525
- Case number
- CHI96IA145
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac7390e47cadd203e39b3e8f6c7dac75324ea50b618edd93a487c34b1f4457f1; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:51:44.702Z.