American Airlines Flight 2197
Boeing 737 823 · Accident: aircraft wake turbulence encounter on approach
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA289
- 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
Boeing 737 823
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N950NN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WATo Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Aircraft wake 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 10, 2018, at 9:00 pm Mountain Standard Time (MST), American Airlines flight 2197, a Boeing 737-800, N950NN, encountered wake turbulence while descending through 3,100 feet on approach to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX), Phoenix, Arizona. A flight attendant was securing items in the galley and was seriously injured as a result of the turbulence. There were no injuries to the other passengers or crew, and the airplane was not damaged. The flight was operating under 14 CFR Part 121 as a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (KSEA), Seattle, Washington, to KPHX.
According to the flight crew, the seat belt sign was on, and the "prepare for landing" announcement was made to the flight attendants. The airplane was approximately three miles behind a narrow body Airbus, in landing configuration when the turbulence occurred. After landing, the flight crew were notified that one of the flight attendants had been injured. Paramedics met the flight at the gate and the flight attendant was transported to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a broken left rib.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with wake turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA289
- Event ID
- 20180922X71035
- Case number
- DCA18CA289
- 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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bc523f9af651950739dee9ba1851c1334537a390cf7d31181cccc6c1881b2f00; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:15:56.184Z.