JetBlue Airways Flight 174
Airbus A320 232 · Accident: cabin safety event en route
From Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ) to Fort Lauderdale, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA153
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 A320 232
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N507JT
- Operator
- Jetblue Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ), Punta Cana, AOTo Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Task environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On May 28, 2019, about 1800 UTC, JetBlue Airways flight 174, an Airbus A320-232, N507JT, a flight attendant sustained serious injuries when a hot coffee pack ruptured when he was preparing the beverage service. There were no injuries to the other passengers and crew or passengers onboard. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121 from Punta Cana International Airport (PUJ), Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, to Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, Florida. According to the flight attendant, he had completed the announcements after takeoff, and began to prepare the coffee for beverage service. When the brewing process was completed in both brewers, the flight attendant lifted the right brewer handle, and the coffee pot was removed with no issue. When the flight attendant lifted the handle for the left coffee brewer, the coffee bag burst, covering him in hot coffee and grounds. The flight attendant was treated by EMS upon landing at KFLL and diagnosed with second degree burns on both hands
Probable cause
A buildup of pressure in the coffee filter package resulting in the release of hot coffee and grounds when the pot locking lever was raised.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA153
- Event ID
- 20190531X35155
- Case number
- DCA19CA153
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 9e75fcd1467107b2114b1ab72ebe3213b5d7dc64d69b03303b8bd57602ef86dc; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:06:42.257Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Narrative gives the destination as Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.