Trans World Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-51 accident
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-51 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) to St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA060
- 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
- Accident
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-51
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N414EA
- Operator
- Trans World Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), New Orleans, LATo St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St. Louis, MO
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
TWA Flight 374 encountered severe clear air turbulence over Cape Girardeau at FL220 during their initial descent into St. Louis. One flight attendant received a broken clavicle and another flight attendant received bruised ribs as a result of the turbulence. The flight data recorder data showed changes in vertical acceleration between +2.5g's and -0.79g's. A SIGMET for moderate occasional severe turbulence from FL240 to FL350 was issued just after the flight took off from New Orleans, LA. TWA 374 had just been cleared to a lower altitude as it was starting to get 'bumpy' when the severe turbulence was encountered.
Probable cause
clear air turbulence encountered by the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA060
- Event ID
- 20001208X07272
- Case number
- CHI97LA060
- 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: afff5ddf15de851beea8e72df007690d3b4744ca5bc06eb80ea053fcb31f3fbc; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:42:47.551Z.