Executive Charters Gulfstream G IV Undesignat accident
Gulfstream G IV Undesignat · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to Van Nuys Airport (VNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA069
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Gulfstream G IV Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream G
- 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
- N962SS
- Operator
- Executive Charters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1989)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
According to the flight crew, during the descent for landing, the airplane was approaching about 16,000 ft when air traffic control informed them of reports of moderate-to-severe turbulence. The flight crew immediately attempted several times to contact the flight attendant to inform her to take her seat, but they were unsuccessful. As the airplane descended through about 12,000 ft, it encountered moderate turbulence. After the encounter, the captain asked the first officer to check on the flight attendant and passengers. The first officer subsequently informed the captain that the flight attendant had fallen and was injured and that he assisted her and then secured her into a seat. The airplane was not damaged. The flight attendant sustained a serious injury.
Probable cause
The airplane’s encounter with turbulence during descent, which resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA069
- Event ID
- 20200121X21657
- Case number
- WPR20CA069
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-01-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 35287b457ad0ecf182d7fd7dbbf1805fdcd1799149c66865c866fe00c5f1d2cf; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:58:04.525Z.