Southwest Airlines Flight 2021
Boeing 737-3H4 · Incident: overrun during landing
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01IA109
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-3H4
- 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
- N335SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZ
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Distance, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was cleared for the approach to runway 7 and the Captain briefed the First Officer for the approach. After getting their gate assignment, the crew requested, and was cleared for, the approach to runway 8. No briefing was conducted for the approach to runway 8, nor was there any discussion about runway length or that runway 8 was a visual runway and would not have lighting and markings associated with an instrument runway. The target airspeed was 135 knots, and the last airspeed callout was 137 knots. The flight data recorder indicated that the approach speed was 137.5 knots. According to information on the Flight Data Recorder, the airplane touched down approximately 2,000 feet past the approach end of the 6,000 foot long runway. Upon landing, the captain deployed the thrust reversers and applied the wheel brakes. When he noticing the end of the runway approaching faster than anticipated, he applied maximum braking and reverse thrust. The aircraft rolled beyond the end of the pavement and came to rest within one airplane length of the departure end of the runway with the empennage over the end of the runway.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudgment of distance, which resulted in a runway overrun. A factor in the incident was the failure of the flightcrew to conduct a briefing for the approach to runway eight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01IA109
- Event ID
- 20010308X00561
- Case number
- LAX01IA109
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-03-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a52dc6c14820abf01021a08bea30302c1f76abc7effde1ae7207b3025ad9463c; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:16:19.817Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N335SW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, SWAA.