American Airlines Flight 2401
Airbus A321-231 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA21LA164
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Airbus A321-231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A321
- 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
- N926UW
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TXTo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2015)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
American Airlines flight 2401 encountered severe turbulence while in cruise flight at FL310 and a flight attendant fractured his ankle.
The captain was the pilot flying (PF) and the first officer was monitoring. Ride conditions were smooth with no reports of turbulence in the area and the crewmembers had the weather radar turned off. The flight was in day visual meteorological conditions (VMC) with the visibility greater than 20 miles. About 20 miles NW of the REDFN waypoint, near airway Q105, the flight experienced a single “jolt” of severe turbulence, which caused the autopilot to disconnect, and the airplane to roll about 30 degrees to the right and climb about 300 feet. The PF took control and returned the airplane to its assigned altitude and reengaged the autopilot. When the turbulence occurred beverage service had recently concluded, and two flight attendants were in the aisle collecting trash. One flight attendant was in the aft galley securing service items and was thrown to the ceiling and fell, fracturing his left ankle. Ten passengers who were not seated or who were not using their seatbelts sustained minor injuries. The fasten seatbelt indication to passengers was turned off.
Probable cause
An inadvertent encounter with severe turbulence during cruise flight that caused a flight attendant to fall and fracture his ankle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA21LA164
- Event ID
- 20210628103350
- Case number
- DCA21LA164
- 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: 3bbaae6cc2a225aa4ed953772ec827708e1addf4a437c07288bdcf0d6652a96e; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:13:07.264Z.