Frontier Airlines Flight 190
Airbus A319 111 · Accident: turbulence encounter during initial climb
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA010
- 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
- Unknown
Airbus A319 111
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- 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
- N926FR
- Operator
- Frontier Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, COTo Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 12, 2018, about 0916 MDT, Frontier Airlines flight 190, an Airbus A319, N926FR, encountered turbulence while climbing through 24,000 feet after departure from Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, Colorado. Of the 24 passengers and crew onboard, one flight attendant received serious injuries. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from DEN to Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, Texas. According to the flight crew, the flight encountered only intermittent light turbulence during the initial climb. However, as the airplane was climbing through flight level 240, they encountered continuous moderate turbulence. The airplane began to accelerate rapidly so the captain disconnected the autopilot and increased the climb. There was no convective activity in the area and no reports of any turbulence from other airplanes. At the time of the turbulence encounter, two flight attendance in the aft gally were preparing for cabin service. Initially, the turbulence was light, however, when flight attendants felt the intensity increasing, they moved to get into their jump seats. Before they could get in their seats, they were both thrown into the air and then onto the floor. One flight attendant injured her ankle and the other injured her knee. The captain called back to the cabin and was told that one of the flight attendants was seriously injured. He declared a medical emergency and requested paramedics meet the flight on arrival. After landing, one flight attendant was transported to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with a broken ankle.
Probable cause
inadvertent encounter with clear air turbulence resulting in a flight attendant receiving serious injuries.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA010
- Event ID
- 20181017X61323
- Case number
- DCA19CA010
- 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, 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: 5aeac4d024c791c5fe7d7a20cb34794b0fcc49a320bd514d65b5adf95f693b6e; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:21:38.551Z.