Weather-Related Plane Crashes: How They Happen and What the Law Asks

Can Bad Weather Cause a Plane to Crash?

Weather is a recognized causal and contributing factor in aviation accident investigations. The hazards that come up again and again are thunderstorms, structural icing and carburetor icing, fog and low visibility, microbursts, wind shear, turbulence and lightning. Any one of them can push an aircraft past what it, or its pilot, can handle.

There is an important difference between weather as a direct cause and weather as the setting in which choices were made. A sudden wind shear on final approach may leave a crew very little room. A flight that departed into a forecast line of storms, or continued into clouds without the training to fly in them, raises a different question: whether a person or an organization made a decision that contributed to what happened.

That is why "it was the weather" is usually the start of the inquiry, not the end. For a family, it can be the difference between a tragedy no one could have prevented and one in which someone's duty of care is at issue. Nothing on this page speculates about any particular accident; what caused a specific crash depends on the investigation and the evidence.

What Weather Conditions Can Bring Down an Aircraft?

A thunderstorm packs several hazards into one place: violent convective turbulence, hail that damages windshields and leading edges, lightning, and wind shear around the edges of the cell. A "thunderstorm plane crash" often involves more than one of these forces acting at once.

A microburst is a sudden, intense column of sinking air from a storm that spreads out when it hits the ground. On approach or departure, when an aircraft is low and slow, a microburst can produce a downdraft stronger than the aircraft's ability to climb.

Wind shear is a sudden change in wind speed or direction over a short distance, most dangerous at low altitude. An aircraft can lose airspeed and lift abruptly as it passes from a headwind into a tailwind.

Structural icing is ice building up on the wings, tail and control surfaces, changing the wing's shape, reducing lift and adding drag and weight. Carburetor icing forms inside the carburetor of a piston engine, common in small general aviation aircraft, and can starve the engine of air and fuel.

Fog and low visibility bring their own risk. Visual meteorological conditions (VMC) are weather good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) require the pilot to fly by reference to instruments. A pilot without instrument training who enters IMC can become disoriented.

Turbulence comes in two forms: convective turbulence in and around storms, and clear-air turbulence (CAT), which occurs in cloudless air and can be hard to see coming.

Knowing which hazard was involved matters because each points to different questions. A microburst on approach may raise questions about warnings and timing; icing may point toward de-icing equipment and maintenance; a flight into IMC may point toward pilot training and the decision to continue. Identifying the hazard is often the first step in seeing which records and which parties may be relevant.

Was the Flight Allowed to Operate in That Weather?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) writes and enforces the rules for civil flying in the United States. In a weather case, those rules describe what pilots and operators are expected to do, and the conduct of a flight is often measured against them.

Flights operate under one of two sets of rules. Visual flight rules (VFR) govern flying by outside visual reference and require minimum cloud clearance and visibility. Instrument flight rules (IFR) govern flying by instruments, under air traffic control clearance. These weather minimums, the ceiling and visibility limits, govern whether a flight may depart or continue. Flying in IMC generally requires the pilot to hold an instrument rating, and whether a pilot held one when conditions called for it is a fact investigators note.

The type of operation changes who decides. In general aviation under Part 91 of the federal aviation rules, the pilot in command makes the go or no-go call. Air carriers operating under Part 121, the rules for scheduled airlines, use dispatch systems in which the flight is released only after weather is reviewed. A charter (Part 135) operator, one that flies passengers or cargo for hire on demand or in commuter service, sits in between, with its own weather and operational control rules. Our pages on small plane crashes and regional airline crashes explain how these tiers differ.

Pilots rely on official weather products. A METAR is a routine airport weather observation. A NOTAM, a notice to air missions, alerts pilots to conditions or changes affecting a flight, such as closed runways or out-of-service equipment.

For a survivor or family, these rules translate into two practical questions: what kind of flight was this, and was it conducted within the weather limits that applied to it? The answer to the first identifies who made the decision to fly. The answer to the second can shape whether that decision is at issue at all.

What the NTSB Investigates After a Weather-Related Crash

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the independent federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents, to find out what happened and why so that future accidents can be prevented.

An NTSB investigation moves in stages. A preliminary report is an early summary of initial facts, issued soon after the accident. It is not a finding of cause. The final report comes later and sets out the factual findings and the NTSB's probable cause, its statement of what it determined most likely caused the accident, along with any contributing factors. When an investigation is open, the only accurate description is the NTSB's own stated status; anything else is guesswork.

In a weather-related crash, investigators commonly look at whether the pilot obtained a pre-flight weather briefing, what weather advisories air traffic control (ATC) passed along, whether and how onboard weather radar was used, the pilot's decisions as conditions developed, and the aircraft's de-icing records. The NTSB publishes its reports in a public aviation accident database on ntsb.gov.

Federal law limits how those reports can be used. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b):

"No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report."

The same section, in subsection (a), also generally bars discovery of cockpit or surface vehicle recorder recordings and of transcript parts the NTSB has not made public, allowing a court to permit it only if, after an in camera review, the court decides that the publicly available material does not provide the party with sufficient information to receive a fair trial and that discovery is necessary to provide it; when discovery is allowed, the court shall issue a protective order.

For a family, this means the NTSB's report can help explain what happened, but a civil case has to be built on the underlying evidence itself. It is a starting point for understanding, not the end of the legal inquiry.

Who May Be Responsible When Weather Plays a Role

Weather does not automatically excuse anyone. The legal question is whether a person's or company's decisions or failures contributed to the crash, and that is decided by the facts.

Most of these claims rest on negligence, which has four elements. A duty is a legal obligation to act with reasonable care. A breach is a failure to meet that duty. Causation means the breach actually led to the harm. Damages are the losses that resulted. Whether all four are met depends on the evidence.

Several kinds of parties can have weather-related duties. The pilot in command has a duty to assess conditions and decide whether to go. An air carrier or charter operator may have duties around dispatch, crew training and keeping weather-related equipment, such as de-icing systems and onboard radar, in working order. Training flights raise their own questions, covered on our page about flight school crashes.

Product liability is the area of law that can hold a manufacturer responsible for a defective product. It may be at issue where a weather-related system, such as de-icing equipment or the pitot-static system that feeds airspeed and altitude readings, allegedly failed because of a design or manufacturing defect. A crash in bad weather does not itself prove a defect.

Air traffic control is run by the federal government. Claims against the government generally proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the federal law that allows certain negligence claims against the United States, which may be raised where ATC weather advisories were allegedly inadequate or wrong.

After a fatal crash, wrongful death is the legal claim that allows certain family members to seek recovery for a death caused by another's wrongful conduct. Our page on aviation wrongful death explains it further. For deaths over the high seas, the Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA), a federal law, can apply, with its own rules on what damages are available.

State law governs most of these tort claims, and limitation periods, fault rules and damages rules differ from state to state. No one state's rule applies everywhere.

What Records Can Show Whether the Flight Should Have Flown

The records in a weather case are held by different people and agencies, and each answers a different question about the flight.

A flight data recorder (FDR) captures the aircraft's performance data, such as altitude, airspeed and control inputs. A cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captures sounds and conversations in the cockpit. Where an aircraft carries them, the NTSB takes custody during its investigation. In a lawsuit, discovery of cockpit or surface vehicle recorder recordings and unreleased transcripts is limited by 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), as described above; that subsection defines "recorder" as a voice or video recorder and does not address flight data recorder data.

ATC radar data and voice recordings, held by the FAA, can show the flight path and what controllers told the crew about the weather. Pre-flight briefing records can show whether the pilot obtained a standard weather briefing from a Flight Service Station or a similar source.

Official weather records fix what was known at the time. Beyond METARs, a TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) is the official forecast for an airport. A SIGMET (Significant Meteorological Information) warns of severe hazards such as thunderstorms or severe icing, and an AIRMET warns of less severe but still significant conditions; both are in-flight advisories issued by the National Weather Service.

Aircraft maintenance records can show whether de-icing systems were inspected and serviceable. Pilot logbooks and training records can show instrument currency and type ratings. The wreckage itself may show signs of ice accretion or the condition of the pitot-static system.

If you were hurt, or lost someone, the records that usually matter alongside these include medical records, photos and video, the names of witnesses, and any messages or documents about the flight. Sorting out which of these exist, who holds them and what they might show is one of the things a case evaluation conversation can cover.

How Weather-Crash Injuries Shape What a Claim Can Cover

Turbulence encounters can injure people even when the aircraft lands safely. Passengers and crew who are not strapped in can be thrown against the cabin ceiling, seats or overhead bins, and head and spinal injuries can follow. In a crash that people survive, injuries can include blunt force trauma from impact, burns and smoke inhalation if there is a fire.

The nature and severity of an injury shape the categories of damages the law may allow. Those generally fall into economic losses, such as medical expenses and lost earnings, and non-economic losses, such as pain and suffering. What is available, and how it is measured, depends on the facts and on the law that applies.

After a death, wrongful death law in many states recognizes losses such as the economic support the person would have provided and the loss of their companionship. Who may bring the claim, what may be recovered and the deadline for filing all vary from state to state, and federal law such as DOHSA can change the picture for crashes over the high seas. Accidents involving freight aircraft raise some of their own issues, described on our page about cargo plane crashes.

For a survivor still in treatment, or a family arranging a funeral, these categories can feel abstract. They are simply the way the law describes what was lost, and they turn on the specific facts of each case.