American Airlines Flight 230
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA002
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82
- 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
- N33502
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FL
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight at flight level 330, while deviating to the right to avoid a nearby thunderstorm of level 6 intensity, the flight encountered turbulence that seriously injured a flight attendant. As reported by the captain, the moderate turbulence lasted about 1 second. At that time the seat belt sign was not illuminated. About 2 minutes after the accident, the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center Weather Service Unit issued a center weather advisory which indicated a thunderstorm with moderate rain, tops to flight level 450, 20 nautical miles in diameter. When plotted, the location was located about 23 nautical miles from the accident location.
Probable cause
The in-flight encounter with turbulence associated with a nearby level 6 thunderstorm with moderate rain while deviating.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA002
- Event ID
- 20001208X09076
- Case number
- MIA98LA002
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7666ad70a379d7bcd77f17473b79c4a481abe0eaf8384a3b6f57d42156417871; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:21:23.480Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N33502; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.