American Airlines Flight 955
Boeing 777 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Miami International Airport (MIA) to São Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA04MA061
- 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
Boeing 777
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N797AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami International Airport (MIA), Miami, FLTo São Paulo/Guarulhos–Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport (GRU), Sao Paulo
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence, clear air
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight encountered unforecasted clear air turbulence while the flight attendants were providing meal service to the passengers. Several of the flight attendants were thrown to the floor by the turbulence, and a flight attendant operating in the rear of the airplane received a fractured left shoulder. The autopilot was engaged at the time of the event, and there were no pilot inputs during the turbulence encounter. Statements from the captain (the flying pilot) and the first officer indicated that the event involved clear air turbulence that lasted 3-4 seconds. The captain characterized the turbulence encounter as "moderate" and being similar to a wake turbulence encounter because of the extremely short duration. He indicated that there were no aircraft in front of them and the nearest thunderstorms were greater than 20 miles to the northwest. The first officer added that they had received no turbulence warnings from other aircraft and that they were clear of all weather.
Probable cause
the in-flight encounter with unforecasted clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA04MA061
- Event ID
- 20060111X00048
- Case number
- DCA04MA061
- 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, 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: c3da4fcd606c22a76b651029ac0070f61a3246609d605306818efa123e4f51d6; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:20:32.255Z.