American Airlines Flight 2308
Airbus A321 231 · Accident: cabin safety event before flight
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Sacramento International Airport (SMF)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA294
- 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 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
- N994AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DFW Airport, TXTo Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Cabin safety event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 26, 2018, at about 1200 CDT, American Airlines flight 2308, an Airbus A321, N994AN, was still at the gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, when a flight attendant tripped over a bag and injured her ankle. Of the 186 passengers and crew onboard, one flight attendant received a serious injury. The flight was scheduled to operate under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 as a domestic passenger flight from DFW to Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, California.
The injury occurred after the main cabin door had been closed but before the airplane had been pushed back. The injured flight attendant was unable to walk and was assisted off the airplane after the jet bridge was repositioned. The fight attendant was transported to an local urgent care facility where she was diagnosed with a broken ankle.
Probable cause
a passenger leaving a bag in the aisle that the flight attendant tripped over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA294
- Event ID
- 20181001X90405
- Case number
- DCA18CA294
- 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: cdaea9bad61e1d11c08eb51ab9c9f3bbdc52f18ab2b67f9dd8eb6b80b57e5c6f; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:17:29.299Z.