Southwest Airlines Flight 579
Boeing 737-3H4 · Accident: ground handling event during pushback
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10FA199
- 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 737-3H4
- 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
- N624SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, 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
- Pushback/towing · engine operating
- 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 handling event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the airplane was being pushed back for its flight, it was struck by a runaway baggage tug. The tug operator reported that he stopped on the ramp to pick up two bags. He exited the tug without setting its parking brake, turning off its engine, or placing the gear selector in neutral or park, which was not in accordance with the tug company’s ground equipment general driving rules. The tug operator then placed the first bag on the passenger seat, which company procedures caution against doing. While the tug operator was handling the second bag, the unoccupied tug began to move because the first bag had fallen off the passenger seat onto the accelerator pedal. The tug moved forward, struck a hydrant fueling cart on the ramp, and then veered toward the left side of the airplane. The tug impacted both of the airplane’s engines and its fuselage. If the tug operator had followed company driving rules, the accident could have been prevented. In addition, postaccident examination of the tug revealed that the electrical motor disengaging seat switch, which is designed to disengage the tug's electrical motor when weight is removed from the driver's seat, was inoperative; therefore, it did not prevent the tug from moving forward as designed.
Probable cause
The tug operator’s failure to comply with company procedures when parking an unoccupied baggage tug, and the failure of the tug’s seat switch to disengage the electric motor when weight was removed from the driver’s seat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10FA199
- Event ID
- 20100410X34740
- Case number
- WPR10FA199
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-04-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ae7f278174dc74d29105da2d7962682a91d39d2a8e13feb1fbf8a0ebdc19e937; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:50:51.074Z.