Tower Air Flight 37
Boeing 747-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Paris-Orly Airport (LFPO) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (KJFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA094
- 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
Boeing 747-200
- 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
- N623FF
- Operator
- Tower Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paris-Orly Airport (LFPO), Paris, FRANCETo John F. Kennedy International Airport (KJFK), 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
- Passenger › Passenger briefing, not followed
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The flight was crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Paris France, to New York, New York. The flight crew had been briefed on the possibility of encountering clear air turbulence. The seat belt sign was turned on about 30 to 45 minutes prior to the encounter, and announcements were made in both French and English for the passengers to fasten their seat belts. An additional announcement was made about 10 minutes before the encounter. Meal service was taking place in the main cabin and the flight attendants were not seated. The airplane encountered clear air turbulence and several unsecured passengers and flight attendants were tossed about. In addition two seat belt fitting failed under the loads. Metallurgical examination of the failed fittings found intergranular failure. A check of additional fittings revealed specified metallurgy.
Probable cause
The injured passengers failure to follow the directions to fasten their seat belts, prior to an encounter with clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA094
- Event ID
- 20001211X09935
- Case number
- NYC98FA094
- 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. 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: 592e6a358019f2b36372681d5c29db82e412dbd628d24d0055b2eea37c93915e; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:10:43.471Z.