Mesa Airlines Bombardier Inc CL600 2D24 900 accident
Bombardier Inc CL600 2D24 900 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX) to Des Moines International Airport (KDSM)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15CA131
- 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
- Unknown
Bombardier Inc CL600 2D24 900
- Aircraft type
- Bombardier CL600
- 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
- N246LR
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX), Phoenix, AZTo Des Moines International Airport (KDSM), Des Moines, IA
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2009)
- 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
- 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
According to the flight crew, they were deviating around known convective activity and anticipated some turbulence. The flight crew stated they selected the fasten seatbelt sign on approximately two minutes prior to the turbulence encounter. The flight was level at FL370 about 80 miles southwest of McCook, Nebraska when they encountered turbulence characterized by the flight crew as severe.
FDR data indicated the airplane was level with airspeed of 258 knots, when the airspeed momentarily increased to 268 knots and varied between 268 and 244 knots over the next 10 seconds. There was an approximately 10 second period of fluctuations in both vertical and lateral acceleration. The vertical acceleration fluctuated between -.55 g's to a peak of +1.64 g's while lateral acceleration changed from -.13 g's to +.23 g within three seconds.
The flight attendant in the forward jumpseat was making an announcement regarding the seatbelt sign and hit her head on the back of the jumpseat when the flight encountered turbulence. She reported that she saw a passenger in the rear of the cabin thrown against the ceiling and then back down to the floor and another passenger displaced from her seat hit her head on the overhead storage compartments. A passenger in the aft lavatory was thrown against the ceiling and wall and two additional passengers were displaced from their seats.
The cabin crew contacted the flight crew to notify them of the injuries, and the flight crew arranged for paramedics to meet the airplane at the destination airport. Three passengers were transported to a local hospital. All were treated and released; one was diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder and a chipped bone.
Probable cause
inadvertent encounter with turbulence while deviating around an area of known convective activity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA15CA131
- Event ID
- 20150611X74851
- Case number
- DCA15CA131
- 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: 0e259dad2e80a46bf5f93653baa47704bcd3bc327f6dd3307dc23b75b6d6c57b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:25:03.238Z.