American Airlines Flight 1428
Airbus A319 115 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Edmonton International Airport (CYEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA030
- 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 115
- 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
- N3014R
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DALLAS-FORT WORTH, TXTo Edmonton International Airport (CYEG), Edmonton
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2013)
- 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 · descent
- 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 December 10, 2015 at 1353 mountain standard time, American Airlines flight 1428, an Airbus 319, N3014R, encountered turbulence while enroute from the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to the Edmonton, Alberta, Canada airport (YEG). The flight was planned for flight level (FL) 320. The crew stated that there was light chop for most of the flight and the seat belt sign was on the entire flight. ATC advised the flight crew that the ride above FL350 was better. The flight crew requested FL360. Initially the flight was smoother but then they encountered light chop again and requested to return to FL320. The captain instructed the flight attendants (FA) to secure the galleys due to expected turbulence on descent into YEG. During this time, the flight encounter light chop turbulence and FA #2 fell when attempting to return to her jumpseat, resulting in a broken tibia. Emergency medical trained passengers assisted with splinting the FA's leg and she was assisted into the last row of seats. The captain decided to continue to YEG after consulting with Americans on call physician. There were no other injuries and no damage to the airplane.
Probable cause
an encounter with turbulence during initial descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA030
- Event ID
- 20151213X84149
- Case number
- DCA16CA030
- 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: ad4b51753744593cd4f91e3ba2ec36a75f3823359bb9108fb40dfb2a6486aeb5; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:01:34.020Z.