United Airlines Flight 9
Boeing 787 8 · Accident: cabin safety event en route
From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA090
- 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 787 8
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 787
- 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
- N26909
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, CATo Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CTU), Chengdu
- Aircraft age
- About 5 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 3, 2019, about 0110 UTC, United Airlines flight 9, N26909, a Boeing 787-800, was enroute to Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport, Chengdu, China (ZUUU) over the Gulf of Alaska when a flight attendant slipped and fell and sustained a serious injury. The remaining 13 crew and 207 passengers were not injured. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled international passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, California. According to the flight crew, the flight attendant lost her grip on the handrail while climbing the stairs to the crew rest area and fell down the stairs. After arrival the flight attendant went to a medical center and was diagnosed with a broken tibia.
Probable cause
an inadvertent slip and fall that resulted in a serious injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA090
- Event ID
- 20190305X42937
- Case number
- DCA19CA090
- 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, cause areas, 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: 042ea799166012946cbd657df8b640eb1b2ca4dec0f870f4a4eb043027f3fc54; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:38:06.564Z.