Delta Airlines Boeing 777 200-ER accident
Boeing 777 200-ER · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Andersen Air Force Base (PGUA) to Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA21LA018
- 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
- Unknown
Boeing 777 200-ER
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N860DA
- Operator
- Delta Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Andersen Air Force Base (PGUA), Yigo, Guam, POTo Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1999)
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight when it encountered turbulence over the Aleutian Islands, a chain of mountainous volcanic islands west of the Alaskan peninsula. A flight attendant standing in the aft main cabin galley during the encounter fell onto the galley cart restraint latch, injuring her top left rib. She was subsequently diagnosed with a fractured rib. Post-accident examination of the weather data indicated that about the time of the injury, there was evidence of a short duration turbulence event while the aircraft flew over the Aleutian Islands. The flight crew did not recall any notable turbulence during the flight, and there were no pilot reports (PIREPs) or inflight weather advisories current for the area.
Probable cause
The airplane’s encounter with severe turbulence while flying over a mountain range during cruise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA21LA018
- Event ID
- 20201109102250
- Case number
- DCA21LA018
- 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, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e1be936bf5832c2fd08527944cf8da81cc566cbd5dccb0095ac3f4daa50facaa; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:21:04.672Z.