America West Airlines Flight 402
Airbus Industrie A320-321 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA181
- 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 A320-321
- 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
- N644AW
- Operator
- America West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD), Hartford, CT
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence, convection induced
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 25,000 feet during climb out, a flight attendant was injured during an encounter with moderate turbulence. The flight attendant was out of her seat in the aft galley preparing to provide cabin service. The flight crew deviated to the closest airport, the flight attendant was transported to the hospital, and the flight departed 30 minutes later for its intended destination. Prior to departure, the captain was provided with a weather package that indicated there would be a buildup of cumulonimbus clouds and thunderstorm activity up to 33,000 feet along their route of flight. During the climb out, the flight crew reported visually seeing the cumulus buildup, and verified it via their onboard weather radar. The flight crew asked for, and received, an ATC clearance to deviate to the right around the building cumulonimbus clouds. The deviation to the right of course placed the flight's path directly downwind of the buildups and potentially in the vicinity of turbulent eddies. The in-flight turbulence event occurred after the flight diverted around a primary buildup and entered into a secondary buildup that was partially masked by the primary buildup.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with convectively induced turbulence associated with developing thunderstorms while the flight crew attempted to deviate around an area of adverse weather. The turbulence event occurred while the crew was attempting to maneuver around the identified primary buildup, and a secondary system that was partially masked by the primary cell visually and on radar was encountered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA181
- Event ID
- 20030624X00945
- Case number
- LAX03LA181
- 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, 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: 12bf92d6bf029e3282316dc9eea2393a668ff7cb903a2db0c3d3c1a66eaaa34e; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:47:30.047Z.