Northwest Airlines Flight 575
Airbus Industrie A320-211 · Accident during initial climb
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to Sacramento International Airport (SMF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA031
- 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 A320-211
- 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
- N324US
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Flight attendant › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, galley › Deployed inadvertently
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, galley › Not secured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight attendant was seriously injured when struck by a galley service cart during initial climb after takeoff. According to company personnel, the galley service cart was not secured properly prior to departure and became detached from the forward galley during climb out. The galley service cart traveled down the center aisle and struck a flight attendant in the aft galley, fracturing his ankle. No anomalies were found with the galley service cart or the galley in which it was stationed prior to takeoff. All restraint levers were intact and functioned as designed.
Probable cause
The cabin flight crew not verifying the galley service cart had been properly stowed prior to departure, which resulted in the inadvertent deployment of the galley service cart during initial climb after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA031
- Event ID
- 20021204X05561
- Case number
- CHI03LA031
- 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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-11-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b814808ca38419189c107826822137f527e839fa97a97c84603aa944f402fc2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:56:43.545Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N324US; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, NWAA.