United Air Lines Flight 818
Boeing 757-222 · Accident: ground handling event during pushback
From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date and location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA11CA073
- 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 757-222
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N571UA
- Operator
- United Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, CATo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD), Chicago, IL
- 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 not 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On June 16, 2011 at approximately 1758 pacific daylight time, United flight 818, a Boeing 757-200, registration N571UA, was substantially damaged during initial pushback from gate 73 at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), San Francisco, California. There were no injuries to the 188 passengers and crew onboard. The flight was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight from SFO to Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois.
United representatives reported that normal passenger and crew boarding was accomplished using door 2L. The passenger loading bridge (PLB) operator stated she was in position at the loading bridge controls and was prepared to retract the bridge. She reported that the airplane door was closed and the loading bridge canopy was retracted. The PLB operator stated she was waiting for hand signal guidance from the ramp personnel to retract the bridge from the airplane. The PLB operator stated the signal to retract the bridge from the airplane was not received, however, the ramp personnel proceeded to push back the airplane. The ramp employee responsible for the airplane pushback reported that he heard the PLB bell ringing for about one minute, which he thought was enough time for the jetway to be cleared from the airplane. He reported that he then removed the chalks, received clearance from the flight crew, and then commenced to push back the airplane.
As a result of the impact with the jetway, the airplane received a 38 inch x 8.5 inch hole in the fuselage between Fuselage Station (FS) 490 and FS 528 and stringer S-17L and S-18L resulting in damage to frame assemblies and stringers in this area.
Probable cause
The ramp personnel's failure to visually verify the position of the jetway before beginning the airplane pushback.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA11CA073
- Event ID
- 20110621X32040
- Case number
- DCA11CA073
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-06-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 353424cec96cfc568274963a922be6a8377e367ec3ea74149392142d51d74ea5; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:19:31.664Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Typo in city name; narrative and airport code KSFO confirm San Francisco, CA.