United Airlines Flight 863
Boeing 747-422 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) to Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (YSSY)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA204
- 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 747-422
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N120UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, CATo Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (YSSY), Sydney
- 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
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The flight experienced light chop while in cruise flight at FL330, and the flightcrew turned on the seatbelt sign. A few minutes later, they encountered moderate clear-air turbulence. The captain reported that there were no radar returns within 20 miles, and nothing more than green returns beyond. When the initial chop was encountered, the flight crew made an announcement over the public address system for the flight attendants to be seated. At the time of the moderate turbulence encounter, one flight attendant was entering the top crew rest bunk on the aft wall for a rest period. Her balance was not good because she did not have both feet on the ground at the time. When the airplane encountered the turbulence, she fell forward towards the wall. In response, she put her right hand out for protection. Losing her balance, she fell to the cabin floor sustaining a serious injury. The airplane did not incur any damage.
Probable cause
An in-flight encounter with turbulence that resulted in serious injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA204
- Event ID
- 20070720X00966
- Case number
- LAX07LA204
- 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, 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: 6340ce4f31c13f4450cab3bd302e906c0a6938d1f131b23372cbfc7e308bd0f9; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:43:26.502Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N120UA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, UALA.