America West Flight 579
Airbus Industrie A320-232 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA224
- 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
- N605AW
- Operator
- America West
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FL
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, inadvertent
- Weather condition › Turbulence, convection induced
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was assigned a routing to avoid thunderstorm activity. The seatbelt sign was illuminated, and the flight encountered moderate turbulence for approximately 5 seconds. One flight attendant, who was standing in the aft galley, struck her head and was knocked unconscious for approximately 5 minutes. The flightcrew communicated with the company, and the determination was made to continue to the destination. The flight attendant was unable to perform further duties. Upon arrival, the injured flight attendant was transported to the hospital for observation, where she remained for 48 hours. At the time of the accident convective SIGMET (Significant Meteorological Advisory) 12W was valid and stated: "…..AREA TS MOV LTL. TOPS ABV FL450." Area of thunderstorms moving very little. Tops above 45,000 feet mean sea level.
Probable cause
an inadvertent in-flight encounter with turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA224
- Event ID
- 20010910X01911
- Case number
- MIA01LA224
- 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, coordinates, 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: 272808a454c2a4e92ac5969dd19b7ce510f2b1437252d763ca8de3343009ec06; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:10:24.074Z.