Northwest Airlines Flight 16
Airbus Industrie A330-323 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Kansai International Airport (RJBB) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08LA051
- 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 A330-323
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A330
- 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
- N819NW
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kansai International Airport (RJBB), OsakaTo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- 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
- Flight attendant › Interpretation of instructions, incorrect
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight attendant was seriously injured when the airplane encountered convectively induced severe turbulence in cruise flight at 38,000 feet. The operator's meteorology department had properly forecast the convective activity in the vicinity of the accident site and the flight crew indicated that they were aware of the forecast thunderstorm activity. About 19 minutes before the event, the flight received clearance to deviate around an area of scattered thunderstorms. The monitoring pilot then called the lead flight attendant (LFA) on the interphone and advised her to make sure all the flight attendants took their seats and remained seated until further notice as the flight deviated around some areas of weather and that it should not last much longer than 15 minutes. The pilots reported back on course and believed they were clear of any weather and were discussing allowing the flight attendants to resume their duties when they encountered a brief area of severe turbulence without warning. Both pilots indicated that they were clear of any clouds and were well clear of any echoes when the turbulence occurred. The LFA reported that although it had been “bumpy” most of the flight, when she received the call from the flight deck, it was smooth, and the seat belt sign was on. She walked to both galleys and told the flight attendants to be seated for the next 15 minutes. According to the LFA, about 12 to 13 minutes later, the turbulence encounter occurred. The two flight attendants in the aft galley misunderstood the LFA's instructions and believed they had 15 minutes before they were to be seated. Both were standing, completing preparation of their crew meals, and were knocked to the floor during the event. One sustained serious injuries and the other minor injuries. Flight data recorder data indicates that the airplane experienced a vertical acceleration of -0.4 G to +1.8 G, or 2.2 G total change, which corresponds to severe to extreme turbulence.
Probable cause
The failure of the two flight attendants in the aft galley to understand the lead flight attendant's instructions, which resulted in them not being seated when the flight encountered convectively induced severe turbulence. Contributing to the accident was the convectively induced turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08LA051
- Event ID
- 20080107X00025
- Case number
- SEA08LA051
- 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, 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: 681bd9823eaa0bdb7fccdd86c4ae34be4ae892d1c3387ae1ddb6269e1dc29fdf; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:39:18.575Z.