Continental Airlines Flight 30
Boeing 767-224 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From São Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU) to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA088
- 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
Boeing 767-224
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N68160
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From São Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU), Sao PauloTo Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), Newark, NJ
- 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, clear air
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight at flight level 360, over the Atlantic Ocean, about 75 miles north of San Juan, Puerto Rico, when it encountered turbulence. One flight attendant sustained a serious injury, and one flight attendant and one passenger sustained minor injuries. The flight continued to its destination and landed without further incident. Review of National Weather Service Weather Surveillance Radar revealed echoes along the airway where the turbulence event occurred; which implied that the turbulent event was likely associated with a Convective Induced Turbulence (CIT) encounter related to the airflow associated with cumulonimbus activity, and possibly above and downwind of the cumulonimbus cloud tops.
Probable cause
The airplane's inadvertent encounter which clear air turbulence during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA088
- Event ID
- 20020429X00592
- Case number
- NYC02LA088
- 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: 1ef2aefe031f963b51a7f4fd5552cc49e4cdaece4b31c40042debd8a4006c9ae; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:03:33.660Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N68160; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CALA.