American Airlines Flight 997
Boeing 777 223 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA050
- 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
Boeing 777 223
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N784AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DALLAS-FORT WORTH, TXTo Ezeiza International Airport - Ministro Pistarini (SAEZ), Buenos Aires
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2000)
- 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 December 12, 2015, American Airlines flight 997, a Boeing 777, N784AN, encountered turbulence enroute to Ministro Pistarini International Airport, Buenos Aires, Argentina (EZE) during a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, Texas. The aircraft was approximately 250 NM from EZE and deviating north of the filed routing to avoid a strong convective area near thunderstorms. The flight crew had advised the flight attendants (FA) that the flight could encounter turbulence in approximately 15 minutes and they should be seated. The fasten seatbelt sign was on. While two FA's were securing the galley, the flight encountered the region of strong/severe turbulence earlier than expected. One FA was thrown to the floor and fell resulting in a broken arm. There were no passenger injuries and no damage to the airplane. The JIAIAC of Argentina delegated the investigation to the NTSB, who accepted the delegation.
Probable cause
an inadvertant encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA050
- Event ID
- 20160112X24550
- Case number
- DCA16CA050
- 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: 6f615cda228b1343edc28eeeb28dd9fd16db2197447ac9dae6b0230e89342c61; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:05:14.275Z.