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SkyWest Airlines Bombardier Inc CL 600 2C10 700C accident

22 Aug 2017 · McKellar, TN, United States

Bombardier Inc CL 600 2C10 700C · Accident: turbulence encounter en route

From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD)

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Event

NTSB case
DCA17LA183
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

Bombardier Inc CL 600 2C10 700C

Aircraft type
Bombardier CL-600
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
N745SK
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL), Atlanta, GATo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD), Chicago, IL
Aircraft age
About 12 years (built 2005)
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

While in cruise flight around 36,000 ft, the flight crew of the scheduled domestic passenger flight was instructed by air traffic control to turn for traffic separation. The crew reported that, after completing the turn, the airplane entered a cloud and encountered severe turbulence. The seat belt sign was not activated at the time of the encounter, and of the 74 passengers and crew members aboard, one passenger received serious injuries and two flight attendants and eight passengers received minor injuries. The airplane was not damaged. According to flight data recorder information, during the encounter, vertical acceleration ranged from -0.8g to 1.89g, the airplane lost about 200 ft altitude in 2 seconds, and the airspeed varied by about 15 knots. The airplane entered an 11.6° nose-down pitch attitude and rolled 26 degrees to the left. The crew reported that the flight until the encounter had been smooth. They reported that they could see the cloud build-up as they were approaching it from about 80 to 100 miles away, but that their radar did not indicate that they were going to encounter convective weather. The company's flight operations manual stated that, before entering an area of thunderstorms, pilots were required to ensure that all personnel were seated and safety belts were fastened.

Probable cause

An encounter with convective turbulence while maneuvering to avoid conflicting traffic.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record DCA17LA183
Event ID
20170824X42626
Case number
DCA17LA183
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: 5e484bc2a00cd002965a0159bc7e4c86b2eaae864f421b47d050afcad56d4858; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:45:12.420Z.