OPS14IA007 · Boeing 757
Boeing 757 · Incident: turbulence encounter en route
From Orlando International Airport (MCO) to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS14IA007
- 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
- Incident
- 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 757
- 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
- UNK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando International Airport (MCO), Orlando, FLTo Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PA
- 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 · change of cruise level
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Organizational issues › Management
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilots of a Boeing 757 air carrier flight and a regional jet both reported to an air route traffic controller that they had encountered severe turbulence while en route on instrument flight. The controller asked the Boeing 757 pilot to confirm that the turbulence occurred between flight level 370 and 360; the pilot confirmed the information, and no further communications were made regarding the turbulence encounter. After landing, all four flight attendants and several passengers aboard the flight were transported to the hospital (later, no injuries were reported), and a postflight examination of the airplane revealed hail damage, which required the radome to be replaced. Shortly after the 757 pilot reported the severe turbulence, the pilot of the regional jet checked in the with the air route traffic controller, and the controller informed him about the reported severe turbulence and authorized a deviation. About 7 minutes later, the regional jet pilot reported that the flight had encountered severe turbulence and requested a lower altitude. The flight crew reported no damage or injuries.
Review of recorded Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar weather information showed an area of moderate-to-extreme intensity precipitation along the airplanes' routes of flight. Despite the available weather information and numerous pilot requests for weather deviations (including before the 757 pilot reported the turbulence), the controller did not advise any pilots of flights under his control of the significant areas of radar-observed precipitation along their routes of flight in accordance with FAA Order 7110, "Air Traffic Control." Further, the air route traffic control center's facility support manager for quality control stated that the center had no program to ensure that displayed precipitation information was being provided to flight crews as required; the center has since made several corrective changes, including a remedial training program and performance monitoring, to ensure that weather services are provided to flight crews as required. In addition, if the flight crews had detected the precipitation using the on-board radar and then requested deviations, as necessary, they may have been able to avoid encountering the severe turbulence.
Probable cause
The air traffic controller’s failure to provide required advisories about significant radar-observed convective precipitation along both airplanes’ flight routes and the air route traffic control center’s lack of a program to ensure that air traffic controllers provide this required information to pilots, which led to both airplanes encountering severe turbulence. Contributing to the airplanes’ encounters with severe turbulence was the flight crews’ failure to detect the precipitation using on-board radar and request deviations, as necessary, to avoid the hazard.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS14IA007
- Event ID
- 20140516X81837
- Case number
- OPS14IA007
- 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. 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: 259c6f16119de045b4b09606ce3f2b4693c4bf5d94e2284950bc586cfb9be14a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:37:57.425Z.