Southwest Airlines Flight 2038
Boeing 737-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA126
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-300
- 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
- N662SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St. Louis, MO
- 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
- Flightcrew › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial airline flight encountered turbulence which resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant. According to a report from the operator, the turbulence was due to a storm front along the route of flight. The airplane was not damaged. The airplane had been deviating in an attempt to minimize the turbulence encountered. In a written report, the pilot stated that while en route the airplane was in turbulence. He stated that the seat belt sign was on and as the turbulence began to intensify he made a public address announcement for the flight attendants to be seated. He stated that he was then informed that one of the flight attendants had been injured. A written report from the flight attendants indicated that the fasten seat belt sign was not on at the time of the injury.
Probable cause
The inadvertent encounter with turbulence which resulted in the injury to the flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA126
- Event ID
- 20040618X00835
- Case number
- CHI04LA126
- 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: ede91b53f3eb5c35a6ba428ccc205a09329df3f2f34fdfccb53ceb23011e5649; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:27:41.945Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N662SW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, SWAA.