Spirit Airlines Flight NKS265
Airbus A321 231 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) to Fort Lauderdale, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA055
- 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 A321 231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A321
- 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
- N670NK
- Operator
- Spirit Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atlantic City International Airport (ACY), Atlantic City, NJTo Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2016)
- 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 · descent
- 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 6, 2017, about 2207 eastern standard time, Spirit Airlines flight NKS265, an Airbus 321-231, N670NK, encountered turbulence during approach to land at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (KFLL), Fort Lauderdale, Florida. One flight attendant received a serious injury and the airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Atlantic City International Airport (KACY), Atlantic City, New Jersey, to KFLL.
According to the flight crew, the flight encounter the severe turbulence while descending through about 12,000 shortly after entering instrument meteorological conditions. There had been no reports of turbulence in the area and the seat belt sign was activated.
At the time of the turbulence encounter, the flight attendants (FA) were conducting their final cabin checks when all five FAs were thrown to the floor. One FA sustained an ankle injury and remained on the floor for the remainder of the flight. After landing, all five FAs were transported to the hospital where the FA was diagnosed with a medial and posterior malleolar facture.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence that resulted in a flight attendant injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA055
- Event ID
- 20171220X52223
- Case number
- DCA18CA055
- 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: 84439e98fa29297084a11d0e340f9c9eed3b199fc70bec975eb097579d76549a; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:12:39.590Z.