Piedmont Airlines Flight 6142
Embraer EMB-145LR · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (KTRI) to Charlotte, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA21LA109
- 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
Embraer EMB-145LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-145
- 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
- N650AE
- Operator
- Piedmont Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (KTRI), Blountville, TNTo Charlotte, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 20 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
- Approach
- 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 March 28, 2021, about 1729 eastern standard time, Piedmont Airlines flight 6142, an Embraer 145 aircraft, N650AE, encountered turbulence during approach into Charlotte Douglas International Airport (KCLT), Charlotte, North Carolina. Of the 50 passengers and crew onboard, one passenger sustained serious injuries and the first officer, flight attendant, and one passenger sustained minor injuries. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Tri-cities Airport (KTRI), Blountville, TN. The flight crew stated they expected turbulence on arrival into KCLT, because they had flown in from KCLT on the flight prior to the accident flight. As a result, prior to pushback of the accident flight, the captain made a public address announcement that the fasten seatbelt sign would remain on and the passengers and flight attendants (FA) should remain seated for the entirety of the flight. As the flight was being vectored around severe convective activity on arrival into KCLT and approaching 12,000 feet, they encountered severe turbulence with downdrafts. The autopilot disconnected and the airplane descended below its assigned level off altitude. The first officer, who was the pilot flying, took manual control of the airplane and began climbing back to 12,000 feet. After exiting the turbulent conditions, the captain called the FA and was informed that one passenger had been injured. According to the FA, a passenger got up while the seatbelt sign was on and was in the lavatory when the turbulence was encountered. The passenger complained of back pain as she returned back to her seat after the event. Two medically qualified passengers assisted the injured passenger inflight. After landing, paramedics transported the injured passenger to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a fractured vertebrae. At the time of the flight’s arrival into KCLT, a SIGMET was active for imbedded thunderstorms and turbulence.
Probable cause
an encounter with convective turbulence during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA21LA109
- Event ID
- 20210330102835
- Case number
- DCA21LA109
- 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: 2ec11f48709cb5b26af20765e12776565e3a57178b6778fc2eb323e709b40ff9; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:53:54.970Z.