Delta Air Lines Flight 1488
Airbus A319 114 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to Miami International Airport (MIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA316
- 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 A319 114
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- 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
- N328NB
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo Miami International Airport (MIA), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2001)
- 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 · holding (IFR)
- 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
On July 23, 2018, about 1531 eastern daylight time, Delta Air Lines flight 1488, an Airbus A319-114, N328NB, encountered turbulence while maneuvering in a holding pattern. Of the 5 crewmembers and 129 passengers onboard; one flight attendant received minor injuries and one passenger received serious injuries. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight was operated under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Minneapolis International Airport (KMSP), Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, Florida. According to the flight crew, the flight was deviating for weather and was issued holding instructions. The crew noted that the weather was clear when they accepted the hold. During the hold, the airplane encountered moderate turbulence, and a flight attendant and one passenger sustained head injuries. The flight subsequently diverted to Southwest Florida International Airport, Fort Myers, Florida, where it landed uneventfully.
Probable cause
An inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA316
- Event ID
- 20200619X60815
- Case number
- DCA18CA316
- 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, 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: 9f66ed21ac69a4ae94047bc08abdfcd7e6dd71ab3bdb749c11d544b95460c21f; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:53:06.963Z.