United Airlines Boeing 767 322 accident
Boeing 767 322 · Accident: clear air turbulence encounter en route
From Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA14CA014
- 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 767 322
- 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
- N665UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ), Buenos AiresTo George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 1998)
- 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 · 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
- Clear air 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
While cruising at FL360 in smooth air conditions with no storms in the vicinity, the airplane experienced a 3 to 5 second encounter with clear air turbulence. The seatbelt sign was illuminated at the time. During the event a flight attendant fell and fractured her ankle. Following the brief turbulence encounter, the flight returned to smooth air conditions and later landed uneventfully at its intended destination.
Probable cause
The airplane's inadvertent encounter with clear air 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 DCA14CA014
- Event ID
- 20131121X13345
- Case number
- DCA14CA014
- 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: e4cf8e9fb443c419ae1102b1fd8606eee94816a37bc9791295dcc1ae3d2eb987; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:08:12.595Z.