America West Airlines Flight 855
Airbus Industrie A319 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA168
- 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
- 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
- N812AW
- Operator
- America West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Dulles, VA
- 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 in clouds
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was in level flight at 17,000 feet, it encountered turbulence for approximately 10 seconds. A flight attendant reported that another flight attendant working with him in the rear galley had suffered a broken leg. The flight continued, and landed uneventfully. The injured flight attendant stated that he had received notification from the lead flight attendant that it was going to get bumpy on the way down, and to clean up the cabin for landing. The captain stated that at least 10 minutes prior to the encounter with turbulence, he notified the lead flight attendant of the possibility of turbulence on the arrival. The lead flight attendant asked if the captain wanted her to do the "Final" and have all flight attendants take their seats, which he responded yes. The weather reported at an airport located about 22 miles east of the accident location, included 5 miles of visibility, light rain, mist, broken clouds at 2,800 feet, and an overcast cloud layer at 15,000 feet. Thunderstorm activity was also reported in the area.
Probable cause
An inadvertent encounter with turbulence in clouds during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA168
- Event ID
- 20040730X01113
- Case number
- NYC04LA168
- 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: eeac4cb4efe1236e0243c631b769cadc7559e8a8c622fbfc0daf35d239d0e875; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:21:23.033Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N812AW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AWXA.