United Air Lines Flight 990
Boeing 767-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Rio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (SBGL) to Miami International Airport (KMIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA94LA010
- 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 767-300
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N649UA
- Operator
- United Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (SBGL), Rio de JaneiroTo Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, 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
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The Boeing 767-300 was in cruise flight at flight level 350. The weather radar was on and no weather was depicted on the radar screen. The airplane encountered about 15 to 20 seconds of light chop which was followed by moderate turbulence lasting about 30 to 40 seconds. The seat belt sign was turned on, and the flight attendants were contacted to check on the status of the passengers. Initial report from the flight attendants revealed there were no injuries. A subsequent report from the chief purser, revealed three passengers were injured. The flight continued to the destination airport and landed without further incident.
Probable cause
Encounter with unforecasted weather (moderate turblence) resulting in injury to three passengers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA94LA010
- Event ID
- 20001211X13617
- Case number
- MIA94LA010
- 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: 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: 6e3887263dcb5e502c733ebd351e1627ff8142d7d337908d13bb4f89e485ca78; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:26:57.468Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N649UA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.