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American Airlines Flight 1114

15 Jul 2004 · Sheridan, IL, United States

McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route

From Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)

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Event

NTSB case
CHI04LA196
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

McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82

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
N585AA
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NMTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
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

  • Flight attendant › Seat belt, not used
  • 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

A McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 scheduled passenger carrying flight encountered turbulence upon entering "buildup" while descending through 15,000 feet mean sea level (MSL). Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed prior to entering the cloud. The only injury to those aboard was to a flight attendant who was not seated and restrained at the time of the encounter. The seat belt sign had been on but the flight attendants were not instructed to be seated. The captain stated that weather radar displayed a faint green return from the cloud before the event. No lightning or precipitation was observed from the cloud. The first officer stated the radar showed some activity south of their course. The radar indicated a line of three or four well defined cells on the 80-mile range "painting green." They saw lightning "well" south of the airplane. Directly ahead, on the northern most side of the line, the radar displayed five to seven green dots. They estimated the top to be about 17,000 feet MSL.

Probable cause

The convection induced turbulence and the flight attendant not being restrained.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI04LA196
Event ID
20040813X01219
Case number
CHI04LA196
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 2004-07-16.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: e8a3d70f8ff837616dd1a311734bc269c4d85d072088700c1de31633f8c6acd2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:21:34.104Z.
  • The NTSB's operator name is blank for N585AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALR.