American Airlines Flight 825
Airbus Industrie A319 112 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From L.F. Wade International Airport (BDA) to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA023
- 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
Airbus Industrie A319 112
- 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
- N725UW
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L.F. Wade International Airport (BDA), St. George GE CXTo Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 1999)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On November 23, 2015, at 1500 atlantic standard time, American Airlines flight 825, an Airbus A319, N725UW, encountered turbulence while in cruise from LF Wade International Airport (BDA), Hamilton, Bermuda, to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to the operator, the flight crew had flown the previous outbound flight from PHL to BDL at FL390, during which they experienced continuous light to very occasional moderate turbulence. The captain conferred with the dispatcher before departure to PHL on the return flight and the dispatcher suggested FL280 for a smoother ride. The flight departed BDA and climbed uneventfully to FL280. During cruise, the flight crew requested and received approval for a slight course deviation for some showers and then turned back on course and was clear of all convective activity and experiencing a smooth ride. The flight then encountered what the crew described as "severe" turbulence that lasted 5-10 seconds. At the time of the event, the airplane was on autopilot and the seatbelt sign was not illuminated. When the turbulence was encountered, the flight attendants were thrown to the floor resulting in one receiving a broken ankle. One passenger also experienced a minor injury. There was no damage to the airplane.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA023
- Event ID
- 20151124X65446
- Case number
- DCA16CA023
- 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, coordinates, 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: 2a43006c0cc1c963254a032f2ff5cff0df9ae7215a7434a91eac2f8f3db7070b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:59:22.512Z.