American Airlines Flight 982
Airbus A319 100 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Maurice Bishop International Airport (GND) to Miami International Airport (MIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA001
- 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 A319 100
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- 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
- N9026C
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Maurice Bishop International Airport (GND), St. Georges, AOTo Miami International Airport (MIA), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2015)
- 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
On October 1, 2015, at about 1118 eastern daylight time, American Airlines flight 982, an Airbus 319-100, N9026C, encountered turbulence for about 15 seconds during cruise while enroute from Maurice Bishop International Airport (TGPY), St. George's, Grenada, to Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, Florida. Two passengers were seriously injured, three passengers and one flight attendant received minor injuries, and the airplane was not damaged. The flight was operating under 14 CFR Part 121 as a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from TGPY to KMIA.
According to the operator, the seat belt sign was on and onboard radar was being utilized by the flight crew when the turbulence was encountered during cruise at Flight Level 360 in instrument meteorological conditions. After being informed of the possible injuries to the passengers and crew, the flight crew declared an emergency and subsequently landed at KMIA without further incident. Paramedics met the flight upon arrival at the gate and transported two passengers and one flight attendant to the hospital. The flight attendant was diagnosed with a minor injury and released. One passenger was diagnosed with a cervical spine fracture and the other passenger was diagnosed with a cracked rib and possible cracked vertebra.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA001
- Event ID
- 20151005X22228
- Case number
- DCA16CA001
- 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: f8af4afd89d91956f48cf3f73cdbbe28878a63d35105b028be32e61e6f899f36; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:51:14.514Z.