JetBlue Airways Flight 1317
Airbus A320 232 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA17CA111
- 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 A320 232
- 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
- N595JB
- Operator
- jetBlue Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MATo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Queens, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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 · climb to 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 May 2, 2017 at 7:30pm eastern daylight time, JetBlue flight 1317, an Airbus A320, N595JB, encountered turbulence resulting in a serious injury to a flight attendant. The flight was a regularly scheduled flight from Boston Logan Airport (BOS), Boston, Massachusetts, to the John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York, New York. There were no other injuries, and no damage to the airplane.
According to the flight attendant statements, the #3 flight attendant (FA) stated that because the ride was "slightly bumpy," she remained seated for an additional 5 to 10 minutes after the cabin received the double chime indicating that the flight had passed 10,000 feet. Once it seemed to have smoothed out, she stood up and began to prepare for cabin service. Shortly after standing up, the airplane shook violently and she was tossed off her feet and into the air and landed on her right ankle, ending up on the galley floor.
According to the flight crew statements, they had just completed a flight into BOS on a different airplane with nothing more than light turbulence on descent. Prior to the accident flight, the captain briefed the #1 FA that they had just flown in and didn't expect anything worse than light turbulence during climb out. During climb out, the flight crew indicted they were in and out of the clouds and only experience light chop. The weather radar was on but "was not painting anything." Just prior to leveling off at 14,000 feet they encountered a strong jolt of turbulence and then received a call from the cabin about the #3 flight attendant injury. At the time of the turbulence, the fasten seatbelt sign was illuminated.
The injured FA was assisted into a rear customer seat for the remainder of the flight with her foot elevated and ice applied. Because the injured FA was incapacitated, the #2 FA crewed the #3 FA position and a nonrevenue FA crewed the #2 FA position. The flight was met by emergency medical personnel and the FA was transported to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with a broken right ankle.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA17CA111
- Event ID
- 20170508X85232
- Case number
- DCA17CA111
- 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: 483bc373dae5ced954abf902a065f6ab241d863f67be90508380e1395dce7ff8; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:15:38.654Z.