Northwest Airlines Flight 563
Airbus Industrie A-319-114 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA090
- 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 A-319-114
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-319
- 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
- N302NB
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo 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 · 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was flying in an area of thunderstorms with the nearest cell 40 miles to the left of course. The captain said the top of a thunderstorm cell was "not painting on radar." They had been expecting light chop but encountered moderate turbulence instead. When the airplane encountered the turbulence, a flight attendant struck the ceiling and a beverage cart. The seat belt light was illuminated at the time. An emergency was declared and the aircraft landed at Denver without further incident. The injured flight attendant was taken to a hospital. An AIRMET for "occasional moderate turbulence between FL270 and FL400 associated with jet stream windshear" had been in effect for the area. There were no PIREPS (pilot reports) of turbulence before the accident, but in the 40 minutes after the accident, there were 5 pilot reports of moderate turbulence at altitudes between FL320 and FL380.
Probable cause
the inflight encounter with moderate turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA090
- Event ID
- 20050620X00811
- Case number
- DEN05LA090
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-06-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b38ec6fe83d8bc7834adf027149aedae1154c4e4abed30b670e34f9632da5db8; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:01:32.200Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N302NB; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, NWAA.