Chautauqua Airlines Flight 1146
Embraer EMB-135LR · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA085
- 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-135LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-135
- 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
- N12530
- Operator
- Chautauqua Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St Louis, MOTo General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, WI
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight's dispatch package included a current significant meteorological warning for occasional severe turbulence between 14,000 and 24,000 feet mean sea level (msl). The warning indicated that turbulence was reported by other flightcrews. The flight was dispatched with a cruise altitude of 13,000 feet msl due to the turbulence. According to the operator, based on a discussion with an air traffic controller the captain then changed the flight's cruise altitude to 15,000 feet msl to avoid turbulence. The seat belt sign was illuminated during the entire flight. During the beginning of the flight attendant's service, the aircraft experienced light turbulence. Halfway through the service, the aircraft experienced moderate turbulence. The flight attendant locked the cart and took a seat. The moderate turbulence dissipated after about a minute and the flight attendant completed the service. Following the service, the flight attendant was standing by the forward wardrobe closet and was thrown up into the ceiling and back to the floor. She sustained serious injury when she broke her nose and fractured her left wrist. A seated five foot nine inch passenger was observed to have a six-inch gap between the overhead passenger service unit and the passenger's head. Three of the passenger service units sustained damage consistent with the passenger's head impacting those units. Nine passengers reported minor injuries. However, all passengers had their seat belts fastened. A review of the flight data recorder data confirmed the upset.
Probable cause
An in-flight encounter with turbulence during cruise flight, which resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA085
- Event ID
- 20101130X64248
- Case number
- CEN11LA085
- 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, 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: a9d5b4af038ae865a7ff55afb361c5c550d5671dc15018dbd5f6614f177db441; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:35:35.489Z.