Spirit Airlines Flight 330
Airbus A319 132 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA17CA123
- 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 132
- 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
- N512NK
- Operator
- Spirit Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), New Orleans, LATo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2006)
- 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 May 20, 2017, about 1930 central daylight time, Spirit Airlines flight 330, an Airbus A319-132, N512NK, encountered turbulence while in cruise flight at flight level (FL) 360. Of the 146 passengers and crew onboard, one flight attendant received serious injuries. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (KMSY), New Orleans, Louisiana, to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW), Dallas, Texas. During cruise, as the flight was approaching a line of weather, the flight crew made a public address announcement for the passengers to be seated because they expected turbulence. In addition, the captain called the lead flight attendant (FA) and instructed that all the flight attendants be seated. The seatbelt sign was illuminated for the entire flight. About 10 minutes later, the flight penetrated a line of weather and the airplane had a short encounter with moderate turbulence. The autopilot did not disengage during the encounter. When the turbulence occurred, one of the FAs was seated in the aft galley without her seatbelt fastened and was thrown upwards, hitting her head on the ceiling before landing on the galley floor. She was assisted by medically qualified passengers and remained on the floor for the remainder of the flight due to numbness in her extremities. Emergency personnel met the airplane after landing and the injured FA was transported to the hospital where she was diagnosed with number 1 lumbar fracture.
Probable cause
an encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA17CA123
- Event ID
- 20170523X15143
- Case number
- DCA17CA123
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-05-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f03deb41165f26fc88e4e358783e70d11bd984312ef1dba9ddcc4791fa4ad085; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:18:54.446Z.