Delta Air Lines Flight 1806
Boeing 737-832 · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA166
- 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
- Not recorded
Boeing 737-832
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N374DA
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), Detroit, MI
- 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
- 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
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 crew received a preflight weather report as well as updated weather information while en route that advised them of expected turbulence near their destination airport. The National Weather Service issued multiple in-flight weather advisories current for the destination area including a significant meteorological advisory for occasional severe turbulence between 22,000 and 30,000 feet. As a result, the flight crew advised the cabin crew that service would have to be completed prior to entering the area of expected turbulence. As the flight approached its destination, the flight crew made an announcement for passengers and cabin crew to remain seated and make sure their seatbelts were fastened. The flight encountered severe turbulence while descending through 29,000 feet mean sea level, and one flight attendant, who did not have her seatbelt fastened, received serious injuries, and two flight attendants and one passenger, who also did not have their seatbelts fastened, received minor injuries. According to the flight data recorder data (FDR), during the event, the maximum vertical acceleration was + 1.568 Gs and the minimum was -0.30 Gs over a time period of 0.625 seconds; these vertical accelerations are considered severe, per International Civil Aviation Organization standards. The accident site was located within the area of moderate to severe turbulence potential.
Probable cause
An in-flight encounter with forecasted turbulence, which resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant. Contributing to the accident was the flight attendant not being seated with her seatbelt fastened when the encounter occurred.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA166
- Event ID
- 20120221X32033
- Case number
- CEN12LA166
- 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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bb8862fbe5b01d01e2b3fadc9b072040a7ec0983c5cbcc05478479ea9c4e9488; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:17:37.007Z.