Frontier Airlines Flight 461
Airbus A320 251N · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA206
- 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
Airbus A320 251N
- 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
- N328FR
- Operator
- Frontier Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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 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 · descent
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 27, 2019, at 0650 am mountain daylight time, Frontier Airlines as flight 461, an Airbus A320, N328FR, encountered turbulence while on descent to the Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, Colorado. As a result of the turbulence, one flight attendant was seriously injured. There were no other injuries to the remainder of the passengers and crew onboard and the airplane was not damaged. The flight was operating under 14 CFR Part 121 as a regularly scheduled passenger flight from the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (KMSP), Minneapolis, Minnesota to KDEN. Visual flight conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. According to the flight crew, as the flight was approaching 15,000 feet, the captain, who was the pilot monitoring, identified a single cumulus cloud in front of them with the tops at about 15,000 feet, and informed the first officer (FO) of possible turbulence. The FO reduced airspeed to 250 knots in anticipation of the turbulence and the captain advised the flight attendants to take their seats. The airplane then entered moderate turbulence for about 10 seconds. According to the flight attendants (FA), very shortly after being notified by the captain, the turbulence was encountered. The aft flight attendant was returning to her jumpseat when the turbulence occurred and she was thrown to the floor. After the encounter, she was helped back to her jumpseat by another FA and they informed the flight crew. The flight was met at the gate by medical personnel and the FA was transported to the hospital and diagnosed with a broken left ankle. An NTSB Weather Study indicated likely mountain wave conditions between 11,000 and 14,000 feet with cloud formation near the accident site and points eastward, and cloud tops near 15,000 ft.
Probable cause
an encounter with mountain wave turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA206
- Event ID
- 20190830X64106
- Case number
- DCA19CA206
- 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: 2177a0b4150b1429eeb339125c0a5c7654dc7dc99623e57056c014205af004ed; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:55:11.090Z.