American Airlines Boeing 757 2B7 accident
Boeing 757 2B7 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operator. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA12CA086
- 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 757 2B7
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N936UW
- Operator
- American Airlines Possible conflict
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PRTo Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1994)
- 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 · descent
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On June 7, 2012, at approximately 1600 coordinated universal time, US Airways flight 1078, a Boeing 757-200, N936UW, encountered turbulence during descent into Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One flight attendant in the aft galley suffered a broken ankle and two other flight attendants suffered minor injuries. The other five crewmembers and 178 passengers were not injured and the airplane was not damaged. The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 CFR Part 121 as a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (LRSM), San Juan, Puerto Rico, to KPHL.
According to the operator, the flight crew weather briefing indicated no turbulence forecast for the route of flight. The departure, cruise, and initial descent portions of the flight were uneventful. The captain reportedly turned on the seatbelt sign when the flight was passing through flight level 180. About 50 miles outside of KPHL, the flight crew identified a small band of cumulus clouds between 13,000 feet and 9,000 feet. The captain made a public-address announcement to the passengers reminding them to have their seatbelts fastened and alerted them to the possibility of some minor turbulence as they passed through the clouds. Prior to descending through 10,000 feet, the flight encountered moderate turbulence for approximately 3-5 seconds. There were no pilot reports or advisories from air traffic control about turbulence in the area.
When the turbulence was encountered, the D flight attendant (FA) was in the aft galley performing final landing preparations and was lifted into the air and thrown the floor near the last row of passenger seats. She was assisted by other FA's but remained on the floor for the remainder of the flight due to her injured leg. Paramedics met the airplane at the gate and transported the flight attendant to the hospital where she was diagnosed with fractures to her tibia and fibula.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA12CA086
- Event ID
- 20120608X43116
- Case number
- DCA12CA086
- 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: ba45de650d4f4ab9ba4a78ef77c64609b4ebd75174af5dc5f144d444621f13f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:26:16.010Z.