American Airlines Boeing 777-223 accident
Boeing 777-223 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW) to Miami International Airport (KMIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03LA067
- 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 777-223
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N790AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW), Arlington, TXTo Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, 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 · 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While descending into Miami, the flight crew began deviating "well" south of a few small cumulous developments. They had begun reducing speed to turbulence penetration "prior to encountering a few pockets of light chop at about FL240." The captain gave a "PA to the FA'S and passengers leaving FL180, asking that the cabin be prepared for landing early, due to possible chop during our approach." They encountered a very brief pocket of moderate chop. The seatbelt sign was on, the cabin crew was in the process of securing the cabin for landing, and the purser had made the announcement for passengers to prepare for landing right after the captain's pre-landing announcement. Several minutes after the event, the number one flight attendant, advised the captain that two of the flight attendants in the aft part of the airplane had been injured during the turbulence event. A convective SIGMET was valid for Florida and coastal waters at the time of the turbulence encounter. Radar images from the Miami Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR-88D) identified multiple storm cells in the area at the time of the turbulence encounter. The radar data indicated that the core intensity of these cells was strong to intense (40 to 50 dBZ). A radar image taken about the time of the turbulence encounter shows the airplanes path came about five nautical miles from the core of one cell and three nautical miles from the core of a second cell. During this event, the airplane experienced a 2.04 g vertical acceleration load, 6 degree of left roll and a pitch change from -0.4 degrees to -2.1 degrees.
Probable cause
The flight crew's inadvertent encounter with turbulence while attempting to maneuver through an area of convective activity during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03LA067
- Event ID
- 20030304X00276
- Case number
- MIA03LA067
- 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, 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: a65c31a131bad101cb995d9e6c1da00c3b3fc5cdfa1e03b5488b1bd8bb1bbdc4; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:54:40.593Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N790AN; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.