Pan Am Airways Flight 164
Boeing 727-200 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) to Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00LA072
- 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 727-200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N364PA
- Operator
- Pan Am Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Orlando, FLTo Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), Pittsburgh, PA
- 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
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 1703:55, the enroute control center, reported hazardous weather conditions for the southeast United States in a convective SIGMET several minutes before the flight encountered severe weather. At approximately 1730, while flying at flight level 330 the pilot deviated to avoid thunderstorm activity. At approximately the same time, the pilot turned on the fasten seat-belt sign, and advised the flight attendants to secure their stations. The flight encountered severe turbulence as the pilot maneuvered to avoid convective activity.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate evaluation of weather information, and his delay in taking remedial action that resulted in the in-flight encounter with severe weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00LA072
- Event ID
- 20001212X21365
- Case number
- ATL00LA072
- 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: 3793a443998b879a70679b01a593e2eae682a358b3ddc32dd730868fc521b1a4; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:30:39.712Z.