Delta Air Lines Flight 2763
Boeing 717-200 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Asheville Regional Airport (AVL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA24LA144
- 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
Boeing 717-200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 717
- 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
- N899AT
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Ashville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2005)
- 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 · 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
April 3rd, 2024, Delta flight 2763 encountered turbulence during descent into Ashville Regional Airport (AVL), Ashville, North Carolina, resulting in a serious injury to a flight attendant. The captain reported he recognized the flight might encounter turbulence since he had encountered it on his previous flight. He stated that during the preflight briefing he informed the cabin crew to remain seated because they were expecting rough air, and it was a short flight. The captain reported that the departure and cruise segments of the flight were smooth and uneventful. On descent, around 14,000 feet, the aircraft encountered moderate turbulence before going into a cloud layer. Following the encounter, the first officer called the lead flight attendant (FA) to ensure everyone was ok while the captain asked air traffic control (ATC) for a right turn to avoid an approaching cloud buildup. The lead FA first reported that everything was ok, however shortly after the initial call, she called again to report that one of the FAs might have a broken leg. The injured FA stated that she was seated in the back of the aircraft and completing her last safety check when the turbulence lifted her out of her seat, and she landed forcefully on her right leg. Another flight attendant hit her head on the ceiling and fell, hurting her lower back. The captain transferred flight and communication duties to the first officer while the captain coordinated paramedics for the arrival into AVL. The captain then reported the turbulence to ATC and reassumed flight duty. The aircraft landed and arrived at the gate with no further issues. The paramedics met the airplane at the gate, and the seriously injured flight attendant was transported to the hospital and diagnosed with multiple fractures in her right leg. Post accident weather analysis suggested that the turbulence was likely caused by windshear associated with an upper front. A pilot from a different flight had reported moderate turbulence between 11,000 and 8,000 feet in a nearby area. However, there were no active advisories for turbulence in the location where the accident aircraft encountered turbulence.
Probable cause
An encounter with clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA24LA144
- Event ID
- 20240403194029
- Case number
- DCA24LA144
- 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, 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: 714ece2a960d5104788358e137356845bf8eb188c2292ad200b547f02f271db5; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:38:22.076Z.