United Airlines Flight 881
Boeing 747-422 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Narita International Airport (RJAA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA292
- 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 747-422
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N175UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Narita International Airport (RJAA), Narita
- 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
- Flight attendant › Seat belt sign, not followed
- Flight attendant › Seat belt, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the flight crew received a weather briefing which included a SIGMET for the chance of severe turbulence along the proposed route. Prior to entering IMC conditions, the flight crew turned on the 'Fasten Seat Belt' signs, and gave verbal instructions to passengers to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts. The pilot-in-command diverted around precipitation which he observed on radar; however, when in the close proximity to the precipitation, the airplane encountered what the crew described as three to four seconds of 'moderate' chop. An unseated passenger sustained minor injuries, and a flight attendant received serious injuries.
Probable cause
The flight attendant's seat belt was not secured. A factor was turbulence in the clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA292
- Event ID
- 20001208X08814
- Case number
- CHI97LA292
- 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: 13a0f0666d653864369c8e89e3b8295915317fd645efcab37be8491a3c459e1b; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:22:58.917Z.