American Airlines Boeing 757-223 incident
Boeing 757-223 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97IA261
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 757-223
- 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
- N660AM
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WATo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), NEW YORK, NY
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in level cruise flight at FL370, flying in an area of widely scattered thunderstorm cells. The airborne weather radar was set to the 160 nm scale, and the tilt was approximately 1 to 2 degrees down. One cell was observed 20 nm to the left of the airplane towering above its altitude, a second cell was 40 nm to the right, and a third cell 'came up independently underneath' and in front of the airplane. The FASTEN SEATBELT sign was not illuminated, but earlier, the captain had delivered an address to the passengers advising them of the possibility of a bumpy ride ahead and to '...keep your seatbelts on while in your seats.' The flight encountered convection induced turbulence (CIT), which resulted in minor injuries to 20 passengers and 2 flight attendants. There were no injuries to the other 120 passengers and 5 crew members. Vertical acceleration was between +2.01 and -0.75 g's. American Airlines meteorologists prepared the flight plan and entered a turbulence index of '0' for that segment of flight (from Billings, Mt, to Dupree, SD), indicating smooth air on average for the segment. Convective activity had been forecast for the area.
Probable cause
an encounter with unforecast convection induced turbulence (CIT). Related factors were: the flight crew's improper evaluation of the weather, and an inaccurate preflight weather briefing by company weather personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97IA261
- Event ID
- 20001208X08364
- Case number
- FTW97IA261
- 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. 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: 70cf6f5ce3baa4bc2bf782efb44a86867cee5577f994e2c84ca80b028f8613b5; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:28:51.503Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N660AM; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.