Safety

Turbulence injuries: what the accident data shows and what is changing

April 6, 2026Updated September 29, 202610 min readFor pilots and passengers

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In this article

The NTSB study: the most common accident type
What the NTSB recommended
The FAA's numbers since then
Key numbers
Recent events
Is turbulence getting worse?
Tools that help
What regulators have done, 2024 to 2026
For crews
For passengers

Turbulence rarely damages an airliner, but it is the most common way people get seriously hurt on one. The pattern has held for years. The injured person is usually a flight attendant, on their feet in the back of the cabin, often during descent. Five years after the NTSB laid that out in detail, the most useful fixes are only now arriving, and the FAA's main cabin guidance still dates from 2007.

The NTSB study: the most common accident type

The main reference is still the NTSB safety research report Preventing Turbulence-Related Injuries in Air Carrier Operations Conducted Under Title 14 CFR Part 121 (NTSB/SS-21-01), adopted on August 10, 2021. It looked at US airline accidents from 2009 through 2018 and found that turbulence caused more than a third of all Part 121 accidents, which makes it the most common accident type for US air carriers.

Most of those accidents did no harm to the airplane. Of 111 turbulence accidents, none involved substantial damage and five involved minor damage, mostly to cabin parts such as ceiling panels and overhead bins. What made them accidents was people: every one of the 111 produced at least one serious injury.

The breakdown of who got hurt is the core finding:

Flight attendants were 97 of the 123 seriously injured people (78.9%). Passengers were 26. No pilots were seriously injured.
Only one of the 123, a passenger, was documented as wearing a seat belt. Of the 97 flight attendants, 81 were documented as not belted; for the rest, belt use was unknown.
About half of the accidents happened in descent or approach, and 60% of those were below 20,000 feet.
The aft cabin accounted for more than three-quarters of flight attendant injuries. Among unbelted flight attendants on those flights whose cabin section was known, 67 of 129 in the aft section were seriously injured (51.9%), against 2 of 42 in the middle section (4.8%).
The most common thing injured flight attendants were doing was preparing the cabin for landing (39.2%), followed by cabin service (13.4%) and preparing for service (9.3%).
Convective turbulence was present in 57.7% of the accidents and clear-air turbulence in 28.8%.

The report also notes that passenger injury rates have fallen since the 1983 to 1999 period covered by an earlier industry study, while flight attendant injury rates have not.

What the NTSB recommended

The report issued 21 new recommendations (A-21-25 through A-21-45): 18 to the FAA, two to the National Weather Service and one to airline industry groups. They fall into four groups:

Share observations. Standardize how pilot reports (PIREPs) are distributed among controllers; require airlines to share all turbulence observations, including smooth-ride reports, with the National Airspace System; harmonize eddy dissipation rate (EDR) algorithms so data from different fleets can be compared; add a weather capability to ADS-B.
Give controllers better pictures. Finer graphical AIRMETs, and advisories, lightning and hail as layers on controller displays.
Build a turbulence nowcast. With the National Weather Service, put a nowcast such as the Graphical Turbulence Guidance Nowcast into operation (A-21-34 and A-21-44).
Update cabin guidance. Revise Advisory Circular 120-88A, "Preventing Injuries Caused by Turbulence," including the phases of flight and altitudes at which flight attendants should be seated, "including in particular the descent phase of flight" (A-21-38 and A-21-42). Study how accelerations vary along the fuselage, and study why caregivers do not use child restraint seats for children under 2.

The report also records that flight attendant union representatives wanted a rule requiring carts stowed and everyone seated at and below 18,000 feet in descent, and that one airline had rejected raising its seating altitude from 10,000 to 18,000 feet because it was seen as a competitive disadvantage for in-flight service. That tension between service and seat belts has not gone away.

The FAA's numbers since then

The FAA's Turbulence: Staying Safe page, last updated March 20, 2026, lists NTSB-reported serious turbulence injuries on Part 121 flights by year. From 2009 through 2024 the table shows 207 serious injuries: 166 crew and 40 passengers. (The two columns add to 206; the 2022 row lists 4 passengers and 13 crew but a total of 18.) The two most recent years are the highest in the series: 20 in 2023 and 23 in 2024, when 20 of the 23 were crew. The previous peak was 18, reached in 2009, 2011 and 2022.

Two limits apply. These are counts, not rates per flight, and they cover only serious injuries as the NTSB defines them, such as most fractures or a hospital stay over 48 hours. The FAA says it tracks these reports "but not general incidents of turbulence."

Key numbers

Source	What was counted	Figure
NTSB SS-21-01	Turbulence share of US Part 121 accidents, 2009-2018	more than one third (111 accidents)
Same	Seriously injured people who were flight attendants	97 of 123 (78.9%)
Same	Seriously injured people documented as wearing a seat belt	1 of 123
Same	Descent and approach accidents below 20,000 ft	60%
Same	Accidents with convective / clear-air turbulence	57.7% / 28.8%
FAA	Serious turbulence injuries, Part 121, 2009-2024	207 (166 crew, 40 passengers)
Same	Serious turbulence injuries in 2024	23 (20 crew)
University of Reading	Annual hours of severe clear-air turbulence over the North Atlantic, 1979 vs 2020	17.7 to 27.4 (up 55%)
IATA, August 2025	Turbulence Aware reports, first half of 2025	24.8 million, from 28 airlines and 2,800 aircraft

Recent events

Singapore Airlines SQ321, May 21, 2024. The Boeing 777-300ER, London to Singapore, was at 37,000 feet over southern Myanmar, "likely flying over an area of developing convective activity," according to the preliminary findings of Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau (TSIB). An updraft pushed it up to 37,362 feet. A pilot called out that the seat belt sign was on at 07:49:32 UTC. Eight seconds later, vertical acceleration went from +1.35 g to -1.5 g in 0.6 seconds, then back to +1.5 g within 4 seconds. Unbelted occupants were thrown up and fell back down. The aircraft diverted to Bangkok. One passenger died.

The TSIB final report came out in May 2026. As reported by Mothership and the South China Morning Post, it found the turbulence was convectively induced, not clear-air turbulence. The TSIB said it could not rule out that a weather radar malfunction kept the crew from seeing the storm cloud, and judged the crew's actions "understandable and appropriate for the situation." Its recommendations include guidance from manufacturers to help crews recognize a faulty radar display and a way to record radar images for troubleshooting.

United 1890, February 10, 2024. The Boeing 777, Los Angeles to Newark, was descending with the seat belt sign on and flight attendants doing final cabin checks when it hit turbulence. Three flight attendants were seriously injured, with injuries including a fractured spine and a shattered femur. The NTSB final report, published in February 2026, found that another aircraft had reported moderate turbulence in the same area three minutes earlier, and that "the controller did not acknowledge or disseminate this report to other aircraft, including UAL1890, as required by Federal Aviation Administration procedures for Pilot Weather Reports." The 2021 study flagged the same PIREP weakness, two and a half years before this flight.

Flight 56, July 30, 2025. The Airbus A330, Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, hit severe turbulence near Creston, Wyoming, during meal service with the seat belt sign off. According to the NTSB preliminary report, the upset lasted about 2.5 minutes, with three climb and descent cycles, an overspeed, and loads from 1.75 g to below zero. The crew's tablet forecast showed green and the pilots saw only light cirrus. A convective SIGMET was in effect for the area. After a diversion to Minneapolis, 25 people, seven of them crew, were taken to hospitals; the NTSB classified two flight attendant injuries as serious. We have not found a final report yet.

Is turbulence getting worse?

The best-known evidence is a 2023 study in Geophysical Research Letters by Mark Prosser, Paul Williams and colleagues at the University of Reading. Using atmospheric reanalysis data, it found that severe clear-air turbulence over the North Atlantic rose from 17.7 hours a year in 1979 to 27.4 hours in 2020, an increase of 55%. Moderate turbulence rose 37% and light turbulence 17%. The authors link the rise to stronger wind shear in the jet streams as the climate warms.

That finding deserves attention, but it should be kept in proportion. The study measures atmospheric conditions, not injuries. Clear-air turbulence was present in fewer than a third of the NTSB's accidents, and both SQ321 and Flight 56 involved convective weather nearby. Most injuries still come from convective weather and from people out of their seats.

Tools that help

EDR data. Eddy dissipation rate is the ICAO and WMO standard turbulence metric. Unlike a pilot's "light" or "moderate," it does not depend on aircraft type. Software on the aircraft computes it and sends it to the ground automatically.

IATA Turbulence Aware. This platform pools anonymized EDR reports from member airlines and feeds them back in real time to dispatch and flight deck tools. IATA reported 28 airlines and 2,800 aircraft in August 2025, with 24.8 million reports in the first half of that year, 23% more than a year earlier. In June 2026, when Aeromexico joined, it said more than 30 airlines take part and that coverage across Latin America had reached more than 3,200 flights a day.

Better forecasts. In late July 2026 the National Weather Service's Aviation Weather Center put the Graphical Turbulence Guidance Nowcast (GTGN) into operation on aviationweather.gov. It updates every 15 minutes over the continental US, at 3 km resolution and every 1,000 feet up to 50,000 feet, and blends PIREPs, automated EDR reports, radar, lightning and METAR data. The NWS notice states that it "is not a substitute for" the turbulence information in SIGMETs. It is the kind of nowcast the NTSB asked for in 2021, and it took five years to arrive.

What regulators have done, 2024 to 2026

Congress: Section 321 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, signed May 16, 2024, required the FAA to review the 2021 NTSB recommendations and brief Congress within two years, and to implement them "as appropriate" within three years, that is by May 2027. It must report to Congress on progress and explain any recommendation it does not adopt. Section 1030 directs the FAA, working with NOAA and in consultation with NASA, to do applied research on severe turbulence.
FAA guidance: as of September 2026, the FAA lists AC 120-88A (2006, with Change 1 of November 2007) as the active version. The revision the NTSB asked for in 2021 has not been published, with the May 2027 deadline Congress set for acting on the recommendations getting close.
Weather service: GTGN in operation from July 2026, as above.
Investigators: the NTSB's United 1890 final report (February 2026) and the TSIB's SQ321 final report (May 2026).
Pilots' associations: IFALPA's briefing leaflet on turbulence injury mitigation (November 24, 2025) notes that ICAO's 2024 Safety Report named turbulence the leading accident category in 2023, and that states raised turbulence data sharing at ICAO's 14th Air Navigation Conference.

For crews

Your company procedures come first, and the published guidance points the same way.

Brief the cabin. AC 120-88A and IFALPA both call for a preflight briefing on where moderate or greater turbulence is forecast, with standard phraseology for warnings in flight. When moderate or greater turbulence is likely, IFALPA recommends telling the cabin crew to finish their duties and secure the cabin before descending through 20,000 feet, because most cabin crew injuries in descent happen below that altitude. Flight 56 and SQ321 are reminders that cruise is not exempt.

AC 120-88A says training should cover how to secure a service cart or a whole galley in minimum time and where the handholds are. It also says, bluntly, that "the most appropriate first response by a crewmember might be self preservation."

Report what you find, including smooth air, to ATC and dispatch. United 1890 shows what happens when a PIREP goes nowhere. And use the PA: IFALPA notes that announcements from the flight deck tend to carry more emphasis than those from the cabin.

For passengers

Keep your belt fastened whenever you are seated, not only when the sign is on. In the NTSB data, one of 123 seriously injured people was documented as belted.
Keep lavatory trips short and don't wait in the aisle or aft galley, where most injuries happen.
Put children under 2 in an approved child seat. The FAA calls it "the safest place for little ones."
Follow crew instructions right away and respect carry-on limits.

Sources

This is general information, not operating guidance. Your company's procedures, your aircraft's manuals and the regulations come first.