Berry Aviation Embraer EMB120 ER accident
Embraer EMB120 ER · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Shreveport Regional Airport (KSHV) to Querétaro Intercontinental Airport (MMQT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA303
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Embraer EMB120 ER
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB120
- 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
- N233SW
- Operator
- Berry Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shreveport Regional Airport (KSHV), Shreveport, LATo Querétaro Intercontinental Airport (MMQT), Queretaro
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1995)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
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 20, 2018, about 1830 UTC, a Berry Aviation Inc. Embraer EMB-120ER, N233SW, found substantial damage to the cargo area after arriving at Queretaro International Airport (MMQT), Queretaro, Mexico. The two flight crew members were not injured. The flight was being operated as a 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 international cargo flight from Shreveport Regional Airport (KSHV), Shreveport, Louisiana, to MMQT. While in cruise flight in Houston, Texas, airspace, the flight crew noticed a storm cell on the weather radar, however, they continued on their routing since they would stay south of the storm. While passing the storm, they encountered severe turbulence for a short period of time. The flight crew notified ATC of the location of the severe turbulence and continued the flight. Upon arrival at MMQT, the flight crew entered the cargo area where they noticed several panels had fallen and were hanging from their attachment points. Further maintenance inspection revealed buckling to four fuselage frames and four floor support structures that covered an area several feet long. The damage was classified as substantial as it would adversely affect the structural strength of the fuselage. The flight crew reported they picked up four pallets of cargo at John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport (CYHM), Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Two of the pallets were loaded in zone 2 and two were loaded into zone 3. The pallets were secured with vertical cargo nets. The flight crew departed CYHM at 1322 UTC and arrived at KSHV at 1657 to clear US customs and to take on fuel. They departed KSHV at 1727 UTC for MMQT. After the accident, the operator reminded flight crews to fly 5 or more miles away from thunderstorm cells identified on the weather radar and to secure cargo better to decrease the likelihood that it will shift during turbulence encounters.
Probable cause
an encounter with severe turbulence, which caused the improperly secured cargo to shift and damage the airplane floor structure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA303
- Event ID
- 20181015X10844
- Case number
- DCA18CA303
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 05e439a75ea297fabc690ef9f42ae3af93e289e0e07afa51df69e5e1d38fa99c; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:20:42.010Z.