British Airways Flight 265
Boeing 767 306 · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From London Heathrow Airport (EGLL) to Washington Dulles International Airport (KIAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA10FA090
- 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 767 306
- 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
- G-BNWU
- Operator
- British Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From London Heathrow Airport (EGLL), LONDON LHRTo Washington Dulles International Airport (KIAD), Dulles, VA
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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
- Approach
- 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
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 flight data and crew statements, the airplane was descending through about 8,000 feet mean sea level in a 25 degree left bank when it encountered one jolt of turbulence that did not damage the airplane but resulted in a flight attendant being thrown down on the floor, which resulted in multiple facial fractures. The flight attendant was in the aft galley preparing for landing, and the seat belt sign was illuminated. The flight crew had previously deviated for weather, and the airplane was entering a thin cloud top as it was becoming established on final approach. The flight crew and flight attendants also noted that the air was relatively smooth beforehand.
Probable cause
an in-flight encounter with turbulence that resulted in an injury to a cabin attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA10FA090
- Event ID
- 20100901X01739
- Case number
- DCA10FA090
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4ad41248e1a411f6c817e2ac4d00318379fd6a9676bc5ee87831f485d9946301; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:03:08.698Z.