NTSB CAROL · Event
Event CHI95IA204
Registry · N131AA
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
PIPER PA-46-600TP
Year of manufacture
2019
Engine
P&W CANADA PT6A-42A (850 hp)
Seats / Engines
6 seats · 1 engine
Last airworthiness date
20220530
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A07EE9
Registrant of record
AERY AVIATION LLC
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
the weather condition (turbulence in clouds). A factor was the flight crew's abrupt control of the airplane.
Factual narrative
HISTORY OF FLIGHT
On June 26, 1995, about 2000 central daylight time, American Airlines Flight 58, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10, N131AA, encountered turbulence while in cruise flight at 37,000 feet, near Green Bay, Wisconsin. The flight departed Los Angeles, California, at 1400 pacific standard time with the intended destination of Jamaica, New York. The crew diverted the flight to Chicago, Illinois, where the airplane landed uneventfully at 2046 central daylight time. Subsequently 13 passengers and 3 flight attendants were transported to local hospitals for examination and treatment for minor injuries. There were a total of 103 passengers, 3 flight crew and 11 flight attendants aboard the airplane on departure from Los Angeles. The flight crew reported that they were flying at flight level 370, twenty-five miles west of Gopher VOR, in thin cirrus clouds. The seat belt signs were off, and the radar reported no echoes, when the airplane encountered five to eight seconds of moderate to severe turbulence. They reported rapid vertical movement with a maximum altitude increase of 200 feet, with the autopilot on. Both pilots said they took control to maintain level flight. After the turbulence encounter it became smooth again. They reported that they then began to assess injuries and made the decision to divert to O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois.
FLIGHT RECORDERS
The flight data recorder information was analyzed by the Office of Research and Engineering, Vehicle Performance Division of the NTSB. That report is attached as an addendum to this report. The report indicated that, "At (the request of the NTSB), American Airlines provided a (flight data recorder} readout of the event. The data were subsequently sent to McDonnell Douglas for further evaluation. (McDonnell Douglas) developed a vertical wind time history for use in their simulator. The elevator deflection and vertical wind time histories resulted in a simulated load factor time history that was similar to that recorded on the FDR (graph II, [attached]). When the elevator was held constant, the wind time history produced the load factor data seen in graph IV, (attached). According to the graphs, if the elevator had not been moved, the load factor would have decreased to near zero as a result of the wind flow field. Therefore, the elevator deflection resulted in the load factor decreasing to the -0.5 G range."
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The Federal Aviation Administration, Flight Standards District Office, Schiller Park, Illinois, was party to the investigation. While in level flight at 37,000 feet in cirrus clouds, the airplane encountered moderate to severe turbulence. The airplane was on autopilot and seat belt signs were off. The flight crew took abrupt action to control the airplane with control inputs. No damage was reported to the airplane; however 17 persons on board the airplane reported minor injuries. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1995_CHI95IA204.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (turbulence, autopilot). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- arXiv 2026 · arXiv preprint
Direct Numerical Simulations of Ice-Ocean Boundary Turbulence
Turbulent heat and freshwater transport at ice-ocean interfaces controls glacier and iceberg melt rates, yet the underlying physics remains poorly constrained.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2025 · Journal article (JAAER)
Political Turbulence and Aviation Safety: A Cross-National Analysis of Political Stability's Effects on Aviation Accidents
To what extent does political stability affect aviation safety? This research aims to link domestic political conditions and public safety through the consideration of aviation accident frequency.
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
ROSflight 2.0: Lean ROS 2-Based Autopilot for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
ROSflight is a lean, open-source autopilot ecosystem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Designed by researchers for researchers, it is built to lower the barrier to entry to UAV research and acceler…
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
ROSplane 2.0: A Fixed-Wing Autopilot for Research
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research requires the integration of cutting-edge technology into existing autopilot frameworks.
- arXiv 2025 · arXiv preprint
Explainable LiDAR 3D Point Cloud Segmentation and Clustering for Detecting Airplane-Generated Wind Turbulence
Wake vortices - strong, coherent air turbulences created by aircraft - pose a significant risk to aviation safety and therefore require accurate and reliable detection methods.
- arXiv 2024 · arXiv preprint
Does small-scale turbulence matter for ice growth in mixed-phase clouds?
Representing the glaciation of mixed-phase clouds in terms of the Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process is a challenge for many weather and climate models, which tend to overestimate this process because…
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