CEN19LA266 · Canadair CL600 2B16
Canadair CL600 2B16 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Dallas Love Field (DAL) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA266
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Canadair CL600 2B16
- Aircraft type
- Canadair CL600
- 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
- N237QS
- Operator
- Netjets
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TXTo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2018)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
The business jet was climbing through flight level (FL) 335 to an assigned altitude of FL 340, when it suddenly encountered turbulence. The captain reported that the airplane was in smooth air when the turbulence was encountered. The passenger seat belt sign was off. Unsecured objects, passengers, and the flight attendant were thrown about the cabin, resulting in several minor injuries and one serious injury to a passenger. The captain stabilized the airplane and diverted to the nearest airport and landed. Flight data recorder (FDR) data recorded the event that lasted for about 11 seconds. At the time of the turbulence encounter, the airplane was between eight and ten miles in trail of a heavy transport airplane. The transport airplane was level at FL340 and on the same assigned route as the business jet. The flight crew of the business jet was not aware of the preceding heavy transport after the turbulence encounter. It is likely that the business jet encountered wake turbulence from the proceeding heavy transport airplane.
Probable cause
The unexpected wake turbulence encounter while climbing in smooth air to cruise, resulting in passenger injuries. Contributing to the accident was the passenger seat belt sign was off.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA266
- Event ID
- 20190813X55350
- Case number
- CEN19LA266
- 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, 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: 12a642a4defa8610b0ce4843a22948baa680a66d42e5094be806bfc224ad58d7; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:44:35.882Z.