Delta Airlines Boeing 767 332ER accident
Boeing 767 332ER · Accident: clear air turbulence encounter en route
From Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport (GUM) to Narita International Airport (NRT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA10FA076
- 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 332ER
- 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
- N184DN
- Operator
- Delta Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport (GUM), HagatnaTo Narita International Airport (NRT), Narita
- 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
- Clear air 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
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
According to the captain of the flight, at the time of the turbulence encounter he was navigating around scattered cloud build-ups. Nothing was showing on radar. The injured flight attendant stated that she was walking down the aisle between the mid galley and the aft galley and fell to the floor at the time of the turbulence encounter.
According to the operator, no turbulence was forecast for the area in which the airplane was flying at the time of the turbulence encounter. In addition, satellite imagery revealed that the airplane was in an area not conducive to turbulence when the event occurred.
According to the flight data recorder, the vertical acceleration during the turbulence encounter varied between +1.5 g and -0.3 g. The encounter lasted about 5 seconds.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA10FA076
- Event ID
- 20100719X80209
- Case number
- DCA10FA076
- 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 local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 99f91b86f13e17312530f5476c3ece919eb06d6d38fcf355e0a189f0b8d5c1f6; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:43:23.139Z.