Continental Airlines Flight 1181
Boeing 737-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA064
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N14245
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), GATo George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- Flightcrew › Crew/group coordination, inadequate
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Atlanta, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Before takeoff, the flight crew was given weather information which indicated the possibility of thunderstorms and turbulence along their flight path. As they climbed through 24,000 feet, they diverted around a 'benign' looking rain shower. As they passed the rain shower, they encountered three jolts of moderate to severe turbulence. All three flight attendants were preparing to serve the cabin at this time, and one was seriously injured during the encounter. The Continental Flight Manual states that the flight crew should instruct the cabin crew to secure the cabin and be seated before an encounter with turbulence.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight crew to alert the cabin crew to the possibility of turbulence, leading to a serious injury when severe turbulence was encountered..
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA064
- Event ID
- 20001208X07667
- Case number
- ATL97LA064
- 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: 72cc522cc2f7a64bf6fa441b18b931c5d1345c8c6475d15e6644c2d8482d1461; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:36:14.134Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N14245; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CALA.