America West Airlines Flight 186
Airbus Industrie A320-232 · Accident en route
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to San Diego International Airport (SAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA240
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Airbus Industrie A320-232
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N661AW
- Operator
- America West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo San Diego International Airport (SAN), San Diego, CA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Flightcrew › Descent, excessive
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of San Diego, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
A flight attendant sustained serious injuries when the flight crew placed the transport category airplane in a sudden rapid descent for landing. According to the operator, air traffic control delayed the flight's descent due to traffic, then cleared the flight to resume the profile descent. The flight attendant fell over while she was picking up trash in preparation for landing and hit her head and back on something, rendering her unconscious. The flight crew originally reported encountering turbulence, but later informed the operator and flight attendant that there was no turbulence.
Probable cause
the flight crew's excessive descent rate, which resulted in an injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA240
- Event ID
- 20010713X01428
- Case number
- LAX01LA240
- 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: 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 2001-06-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eabb9abe54e82f641497fd3271ee9652acc5b427c72365b956540f1cc536ddf0; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:12:29.305Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N661AW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AWXA.