U.S. Air Express Flight 3040
de Havilland DH-8-201 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA017
- 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
de Havilland DH-8-201
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DH-8
- 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
- N988HA
- Operator
- U.S. Air Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX)To 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 · 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
- Passenger › Seat belt, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The PIC stated he was on initial climb passing through 4,500 feet when the airplane encountered severe turbulence. The weather radar was on the 50 mile range with no weather depicted except for rain showers. The seatbelt sign was illuminated. A passenger who unbuckled her seatbelt was ejected from her seat and sustained serious injury.
Probable cause
The passengers failure to secure her seatbelt as directed by the flight crew (seatbelt sign illuminated) on initial takeoff climb resulting in her ejection from her seat during an encounter with turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA017
- Event ID
- 20001208X09084
- Case number
- MIA98LA017
- 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: 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 1997-11-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4ab5834dd2df9eff9de0ed6e9409959db238b0683e7c01debaa1671750bcdec7; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:19:06.978Z.