America West Airlines Boeing 757-2G7 accident
Boeing 757-2G7 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Harry Reid International Airport (LAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA146
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 757-2G7
- 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
- N910AW
- Operator
- America West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando International Airport (MCO), Orlando, FLTo Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NV
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While cruising at FL310, the captain observed on radar that the airplane was approaching a line of thunderstorm cells, which had been forecast. The captain advised the first flight attendant to expect turbulence. He turned on the fasten seat belt sign, and he directed that cabin service be suspended and the service carts stowed. The first flight attendant notified the other flight attendants of the captain's instructions. She stated that she directed them to "stop service and take their seats immediately." The flight attendants secured the cabin, which took a few minutes. However, they had not taken their seats when the airplane encountered several jolts of moderate turbulence. The airplane's flight data recorder indicated that within a 1/2-second period the vertical acceleration changed from -0.05G to +2.37Gs. The first flight attendant (front cabin) was knocked off her feet. The three flight attendants in the aft galley were thrown upward but did not strike the ceiling before coming back down and falling to the floor. One was seriously injured. The operator's "InFlight Operations Manual" required the flight crew to use standard terminology during briefings to the flight attendants. The descriptive terms include usage of the words "light, moderate, or severe" when describing expected turbulence. Neither the captain nor any of the flight attendants reported having used/heard these terms regarding the anticipated turbulence intensity.
Probable cause
The en route cruise encounter with forecast moderate turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA146
- Event ID
- 20001212X20847
- Case number
- LAX00LA146
- 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 2000-04-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e2774306a50681f65beefd0b0c5050d152b98dbe1f858c2a369b00f49de98178; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:41:37.810Z.