Southwest Airlines Flight 1706
Boeing 737-500 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Sacramento International Airport (SMF)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA275
- 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
- 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 737-500
- 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
- N512SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, ORTo Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, CA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence(thunderstorms)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 33 minutes after takeoff, while cruising at FL 330, the airplane captain observed a weather cell ahead. He initially believed that passage would occur over the cell's top, but as he neared, the cell built up. The fasten seat belt sign was turned on. However, none of the flight attendants were directed to be seated. The airplane went through the top of the cell during which time 5 seconds of moderate intensity turbulence was experienced. Two standing flight attendants and two passengers fell down. One of the flight attendants was seriously injured, and the two passengers sustained minor injuries. During the mishap, the airplane's altitude varied a maximum of 400 feet.
Probable cause
An encounter with turbulence from a developing thunderstorm during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA275
- Event ID
- 20010821X01745
- Case number
- LAX01LA275
- 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: investigation status, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d3e9575019ab6b895b7be7b13c9b30b9a88a1fb62c2877d74bf095a8db7aea7; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:10:46.114Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N512SW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, SWAA.