American Eagle Airlines Flight 3224
Embraer EMB-145LR · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA363
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Embraer EMB-145LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-145
- 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
- N601DW
- Operator
- American Eagle Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TX
- 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
The commercial flight was cruising at an altitude of 38,000 feet when the flight crew made a public announcement to the passengers (and a separate call to the flight attendant) that they may encounter turbulence, and the fasten seatbelt sign was turned on. The captain said they entered clouds and the flight was smooth for about 10 minutes when they noticed a very small red return (thunderstorm cell)on the radar about 5 miles in front of them. The crew did not have enough time to take evasive action and they penetrated the cell, encountering moderate rain with a strong updraft followed by one instance of a severe downdraft. The autopilot disengaged and the captain assumed control of the airplane. Shortly after, the flight attendant called on the interphone and said that she was assisting an elderly passenger in the lavatory when the upset occurred and they were both seriously injured. The captain immediately declared an emergency and landed without further incident. Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR) imagery identified a discrete cell of strong reflectivity values coincident with the airplane's position at the time of the turbulence event. A review of recorded weather data from two separate air traffic control centers handling the flight showed that moderate to extreme intensity precipitation existed ahead of the airplane for an extended period. However, the controllers did not recall seeing any displayed precipitation in the accident location, although they did recall seeing precipitation in other locations around the area. Review of display settings in use by the controllers showed no reason that the weather would not have been displayed, and there was no indication of a system malfunction. Review of ATC communications between the controllers and the flight crew revealed there were no discussions of the precipitation and thunderstorm activity ahead of the flight as required per Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Order 7110.65, paragraph 2-6-4, "Weather and Chaff Services."
Probable cause
The inadvertent encounter with convective weather during cruise flight. Contributing to the accident was the flight crew's failure to detect and avoid the thunderstorm cell earlier in the flight, and the failure of air traffic controllers to provide the convective weather information to the flight crew.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA363
- Event ID
- 20100701X93344
- Case number
- CEN10LA363
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 77e55c7b1310de7501b5ca024116f88370cb9845009ca95c8e1efd83200025b5; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:35:44.783Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Wrong state abbreviation; airport code GSO is Piedmont Triad International Airport, Greensboro, NC.