Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-3P6 accident
Boeing 767-3P6 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA022
- 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 767-3P6
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N156DL
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ), Buenos AiresTo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Turbulence encounter
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the cruise portion of a scheduled international passenger flight, a flight attendant incurred serious injury while trying to stow a beverage cart during an encounter with turbulence. The flight attendant stated, "…the cart as it often does, went to the side and not forward as I was trying to put it in its secured position. Unknown to me, when the cart went on [its] own route to the side and not forward it must have caused a whip lash." The flight attendant continued with her duties for the remainder of the flight, and sought medical attention after the flight landed at its scheduled destination. The flight attendant's injuries consisted of two fractured ribs. According to statements provided by the cockpit crew, they were unaware that anyone had been injured until several days after the conclusion of the flight. None recalled encountering any significant turbulence during the flight. Seven other flight attendants also provided written statements. Five of the flight attendants did not recall anything abnormal about the flight, one recalled encountering a "patch of rough air," and one recalled encountering an unexpected area of "severe turbulence." Due to the Safety Board's late notification of the event, flight data recorder information pertaining to the accident flight was not available. The exact time and location that the event took place could not be determined.
Probable cause
An inadvertent encounter with turbulence, which resulted in an injury to a flight cabin attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA022
- Event ID
- 20091020X14635
- Case number
- ERA10CA022
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 98f8da755f0069bd60df830f38f29e03bd96a31c2889bd2f43728f18bd30320f; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:25:38.023Z.