Delta Air Lines Airbus Industrie A320-212 accident
Airbus Industrie A320-212 · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN) to Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA12CA088
- 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
Airbus Industrie A320-212
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N352NW
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), Madison, WITo Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MN
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After receiving a forecast of turbulence from air traffic control (ATC), the flight crew briefed the flight attendants, informed the passengers via the public address system, and the seatbelt sign was illuminated. During descent for landing, the airplane encountered turbulence as the flight crew was maneuvering to avoid weather and radar returns. During the event, a flight attendant standing in the aft galley sustained a serious injury to his right ankle when he was lifted and dropped back to the floor. The remaining 149 passengers and crewmembers onboard were not injured. The flight crew declared an emergency and the airplane landed without further incident.
Probable cause
Inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence while in descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA12CA088
- Event ID
- 20120612X01249
- Case number
- DCA12CA088
- 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 2012-06-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0291be9cd1cf518bbd2d1a4005d1ce5fd36d32ad4c7c5fca7a60c02fd69d9528; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:27:43.892Z.