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DCA16CA008

2015-10-09 · Pound Ridge, New York, United States · Serious · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

hot water spilled from a cup onto the flight attendant's arm resulting in a 2nd degree burn.

Factual narrative

As a flight attendant (FA) was moving from the galley to the cabin to serve a tray of drinks, a cup of hot water fell off the tray and spilled onto her arm resulting in 2nd degree burns to her forearm and bicep, measuring about 1 inch by 2 inches, and separation of skin. The crew reported the flight encountered some light turbulence enroute but it was not determined if any was encountered at the time of the event. As a flight attendant (FA) was moving from the galley to the cabin to serve a tray of drinks, a cup of hot water fell off the tray and spilled onto her arm resulting in 2nd degree burns to her forearm and bicep, measuring about 1 inch by 2 inches, and separation of skin. The crew reported the flight encountered some light turbulence enroute but it was not determined if any was encountered at the time of the event. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.

  • C Personnel issues-Task performance-(general)-(general)-Cabin crew - C

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2015_DCA16CA008.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (turbulence). All research papers