Continental Airlines Flight 128
Boeing 767 · Turbulence (under investigation)
From Rio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA09IA071
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 179
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 26
- 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 767
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N76156
- Operator
- Continental Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From Rio de Janeiro Galeão – Tom Jobim International Airport (GIG)To George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Continental Airlines Flight 128, operated by a Boeing 767-200ER, registration N76156, is a commercial flight between the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Houston, United States. It became known after it diverted to Miami International Airport on 3 August 2009, after encountering severe turbulence en route. The aircraft was flying over the region between Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands, about 50 miles north of the Dominican Republic.
At least 26 people on board were injured, four of them in more serious condition.
According to Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the FAA, the US civil aviation agency, said that the aircraft landed in Miami at around 5:30 local time (6:30 Brasília time), about an hour after passing through the zone of turbulence.
According to the airline, at the time of the turbulence the "fasten seat belts" signs were illuminated, but many passengers were not wearing their seat belts, causing them to be thrown against the ceiling. The official cause of this incident is still under investigation.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Portuguese Wikipedia article “Voo Continental Airlines 128” (revision 69442737, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The Captain stated that the ride had been smooth at their cruise altitude of 36,000 feet and he was able to see lights on the ground below with good forward visibility as well. The autopilot was engaged, both weather radar devices were on and functioning normally, and the seat belt sign was illuminated. Seconds after he initiated a climb to 38,000 feet, the aircraft encountered an initial severe bump followed by a few seconds of moderate turbulence and a final severe bump within the span of about ten seconds. The aircraft continued to climb and level off at 38,000 feet.
The Captain was notified that there were some passenger and flight attendant injuries and made the decision to declare a medical emergency diversion to Miami International Airport in Florida where the aircraft landed one hour and forty minutes later.
The FDR data indicated that, upon a climb from 36,000 feet to 38,000 feet, the vertical acceleration changed from 1.0 g’s to 2.0 g’s in one second, continued to oscillate from 2.0 g’s to 0.9’s for seven seconds before returning to 1.0 g’s and then immediately accelerating to -1.0 g’s in 0.5 seconds. No pilot reports near the location and close to the time of the turbulence encounter were found on record, and the weather document issued for the incident flight showed no predicted turbulence activity at the time of the turbulence event in the turbulence region. In addition, a meteorological study using satellite weather imagery at the time of the incident indicated the presence of isolated, rapidly developing cumulus congestus to cumulonimbus clouds under the airplane’s flight path.
Probable cause
The flight crew's inadvertent flight through the top of a convective updraft that resulted in an encounter with convective induced turbulence. Contributing to the severity of the incident was the unrestrained status of several passengers, contrary to the lighted seat belt sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Portuguese Wikipedia article: Voo Continental Airlines 128
- Article
- Voo Continental Airlines 128
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 69442737 · 2025-01-26 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q10392498
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA09IA071
- Event ID
- 20090810X21314
- Case number
- DCA09IA071
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- pt Wikipedia article "Voo Continental Airlines 128" (page 2339290, revision 69442737), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA09IA071 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA09IA071: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA09IA071
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Continental Airlines Flight 128" and NTSB case DCA09IA071, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.