US Airways Boeing 767-2B7 accident
Boeing 767-2B7 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) to Frankfurt Main Airport (EDDF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA044
- 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
Boeing 767-2B7
- 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
- N253AY
- Operator
- US Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, PATo Frankfurt Main Airport (EDDF), Frankfurt
- 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 · climb to 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight crew and a flight attendant, about 15 minutes after departure, the airplane was climbing through flight level 220. Although the captain had allowed the use of approved portable electronic devices (PED) as the airplane climbed above 10,000 feet, the fasten seatbelt sign remained illuminated. When the PED allowance was announced, a couple of passengers began to move about the cabin, including one that went to the lavatory. As the passenger was exiting the lavatory and returning to her seat, the airplane encountered unforecast moderate turbulence. The passenger fell down in the aisle and suffered a fractured ankle.
Probable cause
The passenger's lack of compliance with the illuminated seatbelt sign, which resulted in her injury during a turbulence encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA044
- Event ID
- 20111020X14740
- Case number
- ERA12CA044
- 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 2011-10-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d1b04fadd611bd71eb3b12a0c72a0908b79274950930e30a5d4e4d1eeafab92b; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:52:26.621Z.