American Airlines Flight 722
McDonnell Douglas MD-82 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From El Paso International Airport (ELP) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96IA235
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- 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
- N493AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TXTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence in clouds
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
American Airlines Flight 722 originated from El Paso, Texas, and was en route to Chicago, Illinois. The aircraft was about 30 miles north of Childress, Texas, at FL330 when it encountered severe turbulence for approximately 5 seconds. The First Officer was flying the aircraft in IMC, and no cells were being painted on the aircraft's radar in the immediate area. The nearest cell being painted was approximately 20 miles right of track. The flight attendants were providing service to the passengers, the seat belt light was illuminated, and all passengers were seated. Convective sigmets 99C, 01C, and 02C were in effect for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The flight crew advised ATC and diverted to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Two flight attendants and seven passengers were taken to a local hospital, and were treated and released. An inspection of the aircraft revealed no damage, and it was released for flight.
Probable cause
The aircraft's encounter with unforcasted and unreported severe turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96IA235
- Event ID
- 20001208X05960
- Case number
- FTW96IA235
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 453bfa3871e8f3cdafe4de2fdb388a046e3393b6d7526e737cef6ad6a2c00bcb; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:50:15.045Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N493AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.