Southwest Airlines Flight 1857
Boeing 737-500 · Accident while standing
From Nashville International Airport (BNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA169
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-500
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N522SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (BNA)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) not operating
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Disturbance, initiated
- Passenger › Evacuation, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Nashville International Airport terminal sustained a complete electrical power outage due to transiting thunderstorms and lightning. Main terminal lighting and jetway power was interrupted for about 1 hour 30 minutes. During that time, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-500 cleared the runway after landing, and the pilot taxied to the parking ramp to await the arrival of portable airstairs. After about an hour delay, a passenger left his seat, assaulted a flight attendant, and jumped out of the aft cabin passenger-loading door. He sustained a fracture of the left wrist, and was picked up and transported to a medical clinic by the airport police.
Probable cause
The passenger's onboard disturbance and self-evacuation from the parked aircraft, resulting in injuries. A factor in the accident was the lack of backup electrical power to the terminal which necessitated a lengthy ground hold.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA169
- Event ID
- 20001212X21079
- Case number
- MIA00LA169
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-05-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 839975ffbefd73a3309afabb68f0fb50860987c4063f4fe70679804d196b9bb9; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:36:35.812Z.