Midway Airlines Douglas DC-9-32 incident
Douglas DC-9-32 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) to Kansas City International Airport (MCI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI91IA175
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Unknown
Douglas DC-9-32
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N933ML
- Operator
- Midway Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW), Chicago, ILTo Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, MO
- 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
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Kansas City, MO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE INCIDENT AIRPLANE ENCOUNTERED CLEAR AIR TURBULENCE WHILE FLYING IN VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS AT 10,000' MSL. THE AIRPLANE WAS NOT DAMAGED DURING THE ENCOUNTER AND THE SEAT BELT SIGN WAS ON. SHORTLY AFTER THE ENCOUNTER THE CAPTAIN WAS ADVISED BY THE CABIN CREW THAT THERE HAD BEEN INJURIES IN THE CABIN DURING THE TURBULENCE. THE FLIGHT CONTINUED TO ITS DESTINATION WHERE IT WAS MET BY PARAMEDICS. SIX PERSONS, THREE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS AND THREE PASSENGERS, WERE TRANSPORTED TO A LOCAL HOSPITAL, TREATED FOR MINOR INJURIES AND RELEASED. ONE PASSENGER SEAT BELT SEPARATED FROM ITS ATTACHMENT POINT ON THE SEAT FRAME. EXAMINATION OF THE SEAT BELT SHOWED A DISTORTED KEEPER CLIP ON THE HOOK ASSEMBLY.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE DESIGN BY THE MANUFACTURERS. FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE INCIDENT ARE INADEQUATE CERTIFICATION/APPROVAL BY THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION AND CLEAR AIR TURBULENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI91IA175
- Event ID
- 20001212X16941
- Case number
- CHI91IA175
- 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, 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: ef3af0e15cfb1068e095283f12fc04e05948358be9a77eb377995edbd375b838; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:54:49.397Z.