American Airlines Flight 762
Airbus Industrie A320 214 · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD) to Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA153
- 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
Airbus Industrie A320 214
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N103US
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD), Chicago, ILTo Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 17 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
- Approach
- 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 May 14, 2016, at about 1900 EDT, American Airlines flight 762, an Airbus A320, N103US, during descent into Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a flight attendant received a serious injury while trying to put his jump seat down during turbulence. Of the 136 passengers and 5 crew members on board only the flight attendant was injured. The flight was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulation part 121 as a scheduled passenger flight from Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD), Chicago, Illinois.
During the descent into KPHL, the flight crew notified the flight attendants and made a public address announcement that there might be possible turbulence. According to the flight crew, there were no pilot reports of any turbulence ahead and there were no cells noted on the weather radar. Shortly after making the announcement,, the flight experience moderate chop for a minute or two and the flight crew reduced airspeed and advised ATC of the moderate chop. The C flight attendant was sitting down in his aft jumpseat when the turbulence was encountered, and was tossed him into the air and back down, causing him to crush his left hand in the jumpseat. The fight crew was informed of his injury and they coordinated to have medical personnel meet the airplane upon arrival in KPHL. The injured flight attendant was transported to the hospital and diagnosed with a broken left hand.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with clear air turbulence that resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA153
- Event ID
- 20160516X92239
- Case number
- DCA16CA153
- 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: 38739ffc46b814f4ee37f4ec24fd9b0377832564da0eab2b851321257d0b7392; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:23:40.028Z.