Mexicana Airlines Flight 199
Boeing 757-2Q8 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From General Guadalupe Victoria International Airport (DGO) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA078
- 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
Boeing 757-2Q8
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N755AT
- Operator
- Mexicana Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Guadalupe Victoria International Airport (DGO), DurangoTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), 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 129: Foreign
- 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 · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew had checked weather for the intended flight from Durango, Mexico, to Chicago, Illinois, including a briefing from an arriving pilot who warned of light to moderate turbulence. The airplane encountered clear air turbulence while descending from 26,000 feet to 20,000 feet which was described as severe. When the turbulence was encountered the flight crew and a flight attendant made an announcement for the passengers to return to their seats and shortly after that, the 'Fasten Seatbelt' sign was turned on. Two of the passengers sustaining serious injuries were occupying the lavatory at the time of the turbulence encounter.
Probable cause
Clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA078
- Event ID
- 20001208X07501
- Case number
- CHI97LA078
- 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: f96f08651e7386658162c9c0bf8bfdb413745a662c7617d1b0c7d55b92cc93ef; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:41:33.825Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N755AT; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.