Pan American Flight 201
Boeing 747-100 · Incident: uncontrolled altitude deviation en route
From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to RIO · RIO DR JANEIRO
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC88IA246
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 747-100
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N9674
- Operator
- Pan American
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), NEW YORK, NYTo RIO · RIO DR JANEIRO
- 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
- Uncontrolled altitude deviation
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not possible
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Georgetown, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
AT APPROXIMATELY 0400 HOURS E.D.T. PAN AMERICAN FLIGHT #201 FROM NEW YORK TO RIO DE JANEIRO ENCOUNTERED TURBULENCE AT FLIGHT LEVEL 370 IN THE VICINITY OF GEORGETOWN, GUYANA. SEVERAL PASSENGERS AT ROW 50 RECEIVED INJURIES. THE FASTEN SEAT BELT SIGN WAS ON AT THE TIME AND THE CAPTAIN HAD ANNOUNCED THE ILLUMINATION OF THE SIGN OVER THE PA SYSTEM.
Probable cause
INCIDENT THAT LED TO THE DEATH OF THE PASSENGER IN ROW #6 WAS APPARENTLY NOT RELATED TO TURBULENCE, BECAUSE THE PASSENGER DIED OF CHOKING TWO HOURS AFTER THE TURBULENCE ENCOUNTER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC88IA246
- Event ID
- 20001213X26909
- Case number
- NYC88IA246
- 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: 9aacf2ec980d69a26032f0f048b2e51bb3f5630a57ca3b21251d74f7c5fec770; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:18:35.431Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: operator. The NTSB narrative names the operator: "PAN AMERICAN FLIGHT #201 FROM NEW YORK TO RIO DE JANEIRO ENCOUNTERED TURBULENCE AT FLIGHT LEVEL 370"