Southwest Airlines Flight 784
Boeing 737-700 · Incident: ground collision during pushback
From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC) to Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09IA033
- 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 737-700
- 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
- N254WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX), Los Angeles, 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
- Pushback/towing
- Defining eventThe 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a push back from a jetway, the airplane's winglet collided with the winglet of an unoccupied airplane parked at the adjacent gate. Prior to the push back, the wheels of the tug were not aligned straight ahead, but were instead turned partially to one side. Therefore as the push back was initiated, the nose of the airplane moved toward the jetway instead of going straight back. At that point, instead of terminating the push back and realigning the tug, the tug driver attempted to maneuver the tug in a manner that would result in the nose of the airplane clearing the jetway. During this attempt, the tug driver's attention became focused upon the jetway, and he therefore did not see or hear the visual and oral warning signals being given by the wing-walker.
Probable cause
The tug driver's failure to maintain situational awareness during the push back operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09IA033
- Event ID
- 20081110X15316
- Case number
- WPR09IA033
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: investigation status. 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: 765cc60ba5e428e8c095ea519eae0687f4a886e74f1ccf5ba823dc0f9688baee; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:32:07.730Z.