Frontier Airlines Flight 045
Airbus Industrie A319-111 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Cancún International Airport (MMUN) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA094
- 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 A319-111
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- 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
- N910FR
- Operator
- Frontier Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cancún International Airport (MMUN), CancunTo Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
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 had just left a holding pattern, southeast of the airport. The pilot made the announcement for passengers and flight attendents to take their seats. Descending through approximately 11,000 feet msl, the flight encountered turbulence. A flight attendant was stowing a beverage cart and was thrown up in the air, fell and fractured her left ankle. The automated weather observation at the Denver airport reported occasional lightning in-cloud, distant southeast; thunderstorm moving southeast; virga distant northeast thru southeast thru south of the station; cumulonimbus clouds distant northeast thru southeast thru south, moving southeast; rain showers in the distant southeast. Aviation Routine Weather Report report taken at 2053 reported winds were from 160 degrees at 13 knots; visibility 10 statute miles; few clouds at 7500 feet agl; scattered clouds at 12,000 feet; agl, broken clouds at 15,000 feet agl; temperature 13 degrees Celsius; dewpoint 9 degrees Celsius; altimeter setting 29.93; virga distant east and south of the station; cumulonimbus clouds distant east and south, moving southeast.
Probable cause
the inflight encounter with severe turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA094
- Event ID
- 20030606X00808
- Case number
- DEN03LA094
- 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 2003-06-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 582f5d5063fdabb45727fe4386d93ae728cd739ee78b9410f19bc8abe7ce0971; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:47:40.099Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N910FR; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, F3LA.