NTSB CAROL · Event
Event DCA25LA023
Registry · N651UA
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
BOEING 767-322
Year of manufacture
1992 · 32 years old at event
Engine
P&W PW4000 SER
Seats / Engines
330 seats · 2 engines
Last airworthiness date
19930629
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A89234
Registrant of record
UNITED AIRLINES INC
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
An inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence while in enroute cruise flight.
Factual narrative
United Airlines flight 128 encountered moderate turbulence while at FL360 and about 60 miles southeast of Jamaica, and a flight attendant (FA) sustained a serious injury. The flight crew reported that while at FL360, in visual meteorological dark night conditions with no indication of an adverse ride from their onboard weather applications or their weather radar, the flight encountered about 3-5 seconds of moderate turbulence. The fasten seatbelt sign had been illuminated about 15 minutes earlier due to an area of light turbulence and remained illuminated during the event. The captain stated that upon encountering the moderate turbulence he immediately made a public address announcement “flight attendants be seated immediately, be seated immediately”. Following the turbulence encounter the flight crew asked the flight attendants to check in and were advised that a FA had been injured. The FA assigned to jumpseat 2R reported that they had been seated with their seatbelt fastened for about 10-15 minutes due to a previous announcement from the fight deck about an area of light turbulence. With no turbulence encountered for several minutes the FA elected to stand and began preparations for the water service. When suddenly and without warning, the airplane “violently shook” throwing them into the right galley wall. Their lower back impacted a quarter turn utilized to secure the service carts. Upon being notified of the injury, the flight crew contacted MedLink and the decision was made to continue to George Bush International Airport (IAH), Houston, Texas. Paramedics met the airplane at the gate and transported the injured FA to the hospital where they were diagnosed with a serious injury. At the time of the turbulence encounter there were no active significant meteorological information (SIGMETs), convective SIGMETs, airman’s meteorological information (AIRMETs), or pilot reports (PIREPs) of any significant turbulence. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- — Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Turbulence-(general)-Awareness of condition
- — Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Turbulence-(general)-Effect on personnel
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2024_DCA25LA023.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (turbulence). 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
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…
- arXiv 2023 · arXiv preprint
Effects of electrostatic interaction on clustering and collision of bidispersed inertial particles in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence
In sandstorms and thunderclouds, turbulence-induced collisions between solid particles and ice crystals lead to inevitable triboelectrification.
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2023 · SKYbrary article
Wake Vortex Turbulence — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary wake vortex turbulence comprehensive article — generation mechanics, dissipation factors, separation standards (ICAO LIGHT/MEDIUM/HEAVY/SUPER + recategorisation RECAT-EU).
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗