American Airlines McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-30 incident
McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-30 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Los Angeles, CA to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW83IA072
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-30
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N137AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles, CATo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DALLAS/FT WORTH, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- Flight attendant › Seat belt, not used
- Passenger › Seat belt, not used
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT ABOUT 1458 PST, THE AIRCRAFT ENCOUNTERED MODERATE TO SEVERE CLEAR AIR TURBULENCE FOR A PERIOD OF 8 TO 10 SECONDS WHILE CLIMBING THROUGH 35,500 FT. SEVEN PASSENGERS AND SEVEN FLIGHT ATTENDANTS RECEIVED MINOR INJURIES. THE SEAT BELT SIGN HAD BEEN TURNED ON BEFORE TAKEOFF AND HAD REMAINED ON THROUGHOUT THE ENCOUNTER. OF THE PASSENGER WHO WERE INJURED, FOUR STATED THEIR SEAT BELTS WERE OFF, TWO STATED THEIR BELTS WERE LOOSE AND ONE HAD DISREGARDED THE SIGN AND WAS IN THE LAVATORY. THE INJURED FLIGHT ATTENDANTS WERE PREPARING FOR CABIN SERVICE AND WERE NOT RESTRAINED. A REVIEW OF THE AIRLINE'S COMPUTER GENERATED FLIGHT PLAN DATA REVEALED THAT THE MAXIMUM GENERATED TURBULENCE INDEX PREDICTED WAS LIGHT. THERE WAS A CAT SIGMET, VALID FOR THE PERIOD, WHICH REPORTED MODERATE TURBULENCE AT FLIGHT LEVEL 360 TO 370 OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN THE HECTOR-THERMAL AREA.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW83IA072
- Event ID
- 20020917X04671
- Case number
- FTW83IA072
- 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, 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: 954c15d7f2f5a391e3d9d5306ee9b35a57f5b9373a1b63e44990e246be2e1160; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:03:34.258Z.