USAir Flight 007
Boeing 757-2B7 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA243
- 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 757-2B7
- 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
- N619AU
- Operator
- USAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), PITTSBURG, PATo Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CA
- 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
- Flightcrew › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Wichita, KS, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During cruise at 39,000 feet, the scheduled domestic passenger flight encountered severe turbulence after inadvertently penetrating a rapidly developing convective cell (thunderstorm). One flight attendant was seriously injured, and three flight attendants and three passengers sustained minor injuries. There was no damage to the Boeing 757 airplane. When the turbulence encounter occurred, the flight was deviating around a large area of thunderstorms located about 40 nautical miles right of the airplane's flight path. The cell that the airplane penetrated was very small in comparison to the area of storms the flightcrew was trying to avoid. The seat belt sign was illuminated prior to the turbulence encounter. All of the injured flight attendants were attempting to stow food service items when the airplane encountered the sudden 'violent jolt that slammed [them] against the ceiling.' Following the turbulence encounter, the flight diverted to a nearby airport and landed without further incident.
Probable cause
The severe turbulence encountered as a result of the flightcrew's inadvertent flight into a rapidly developing thunderstorm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA243
- Event ID
- 20001211X10090
- Case number
- FTW98LA243
- 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 1998-05-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 351d44457e92eed90dc0d77b93f5d051d7cf587afcffd0f78bcce309f57369d9; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:08:48.570Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N619AU; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, USAA.